


Wishless

by elfenphoenix



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Archer Lance, Demon Summoning AU, Demon prince Keith, Lance accidentally summons a demon, Lance gets one wish, M/M, angel princess Allura, but doesn't know what to wish for, demon keith, demon king Shiro, mentions of torture, regular human boy Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-03-17 16:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 75,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13662522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfenphoenix/pseuds/elfenphoenix
Summary: If you had the chance to wish for something, anything, do you honestly know what you'd wish for?Lance doesn't. So when a fun day at a water park leads to him accidentally summoning a powerful but beautiful demon prince, who tells Lance that he can grant him any wish at all, Lance is left kind of stumped.On the one hand, he doesn't really know what to wish for, which leaves Demon Prince Keith in a bind, because he can't leave Lance's side until he makes his wish. On the other hand, Lance is starting to kind of enjoy having Keith around...





	1. A Bloody Accident

**Author's Note:**

> Universe inspired greatly by Yamamoto Kotetsuko's "Konya mo Nemuranai," a wonderful story I recommend reading! A lot of this story is going to diverge from it, but some aspects should be recognizable. That said, I hope you enjoy this story!

Lance considered himself just the right amount of superstitious. It wasn’t like he was absolutely paralyzed with fear at the idea of the devil appearing over his shoulder whenever he spilled the salt, it was just that he figured, “hey, if he _is_ there, it wouldn’t _hurt_ to take a pinch of the salt and throw it over my shoulder, right? I mean, I don’t _lose_ anything by doing it, just in case.”

Which seems totally reasonable, right? The same with ghosts, witches, monsters, demons… all of those other things that his mom would tell him stories about when he was a kid to get him to behave. He wasn’t sure if he really _really_ believed in them, but he figured it was always better to assume they existed, and be wrong, than assume that they _didn’t_ , and be wrong.

It worked on the positive side, too. He was pretty sure you couldn’t exactly just _wish_ yourself to happiness; it came with hard work and perseverance, but it didn’t hurt to toss a coin into a wishing well once in a while.

There was one problem: he never knew what to wish for.

It’s not like he didn’t have things he _wanted_ ; to get a girlfriend, for his mom to win the lottery, his sister’s next baby to be healthy, to get into a good college, pass his next test, get an archery scholarship… it’s just that when it came time to actually make the wish, his brain got all jumbled and he never knew what he should wish for. Or maybe he’d be wasting his wish if he used it on himself or his family. Maybe he should use it for something more big-picture, like world peace, or ending world hunger, or something.

That was the situation he found himself in now, flipping a shiny quarter over and over between his fingers as he stared down at the shiny white marble fountain in front of him, the flow of its artificially bluish water distorting the view of the scattering of coins at its bottom. He glanced up at its sculpture: a woman in scuba diving gear, smiling as she embraced a dolphin.

“What would _you_ wish for?” he muttered to her, tapping his index finger against the coin. “No more oil spills? The release of imprisoned marine life into the wild where they belong?”

Of course, the statue didn’t answer, but someone else did, a familiar and always sarcastic voice from just below his shoulder.

“I think she’s wishing for that dolphin to stop raping baby seals.”

Lance jumped, looking down at Pidge in disgust. “Dude, _really_?!”

She grinned. “Hey, it’s true and you know it. Although, actually, I think it’s the otters that usually rape baby seals. The dolphins aren’t picky.”

Lance rolled his eyes and stepped away from the fountain, sliding the quarter back into his jacket pocket. “You ruin everything adorable in this world.”

“It’s my objective in life,” she shrugged, beginning to head off through the park, away from the wishing fountain. “Anyway, me and Hunk are gonna go down the waterslide. Better hurry up or we’re gonna go in without you.”

“Hey, hey, hey, wait up!” Lance shouted, running after her.

 

It was their annual waterpark bonanza, a tradition Lance, Hunk, and Pidge had started back in their first year of college, right after the first semester finals came to a close. There was a pretty big indoor waterpark not far from their school, so as soon as they all finished their last test or project of the semester, the three of them got together to have fun and wind down. Waterslides, lazy rivers, hot tubs, wave pools… it was practically paradise for Lance, who loved the water almost as much as he liked eating.

After their trip down the waterslide had almost made Lance lose his blue swim trunks, he’d tied the cord extra tight and challenged them to go to the deepest part of the wave pool, which was famous for having the largest artificial waves in the country, and could seriously knock you off your feet. Which at first had had Lance a bit worried about Pidge, who weighed about as much as a middle schooler, but it hadn’t really become a problem because she had gotten pretty good at riding the current so that it would send her sailing right into Hunk. The game was that he would have to catch her before she floated away.

They were having a pretty good time jumping waves like this, Lance showing off and doing a somersault as the wave crashed over him, getting to his feet after it had passed, brushing a wet hand through his wet hair, and winking at a nearby group of girls. Which led to Pidge unceremoniously dowsing him with water, but he still felt pretty confident.

Things went wrong when the next wave came. One group of swimmers was standing just a bit too close to them, and so when the wave hit, it knocked all of them off of their feet, and sent one of them into Hunk, who instinctively caught him and held him safely in place. But this left Pidge without a safety net, and so when she was sent careening backwards by the force of the water, Lance had to react fast to catch her before she was sent smashing right into the bottom of the pool.

He managed it, rolling against the bottom of the pool himself, then bringing both of them back up for air.

“Hunk, what the hell!” Pidge coughed, shaking her waterlogged hair out of her eyes. “You’ve done this thousands of times!”

“Sorry! I just didn’t want this guy to get hurt, either!” he answered, setting the stranger who had crashed into him back on his feet. “You okay?”

The guy nodded, but Pidge was shaking the water out of her ears. “Yeah I’m fine, thanks to… Lance, you’re bleeding!”

“Huh?” He looked down, and realized that the water around him had gone cloudy, like the scene of a shark attack. “Aaahhh! Crap! Um… guess it’s time to call it a day!”

They quickly made their way out of the water, where they analyzed the scrape. It wasn’t that deep, but bleeding quite a bit, and the water streaming down Lance’s leg wasn’t helping the blood flow.

“Dude, we’d better take you to the park’s health office,” Hunk suggested.

“Yeah, this probably isn’t gonna stop bleeding anytime soon,” Pidge sighed. “So I guess our bonanza’s over.”

“Hey, I could have let you crack your head open on the pool instead,” Lance griped. He was a bit surprised. He hadn’t felt the pain while he’d been underwater, so he hadn’t even noticed when he’d gotten injured. Now that he was out in the open air, though, the scrape was starting to sting.

The trio made their way to the nearest park security and explained the situation. He pointed them toward an office in the main building, and Lance decided that he’d go in by himself while Pidge and Hunk got their stuff out of the lockers.

“Hello?” he asked, knocking on the office door.

No answer, but Lance noticed a sign taped to the door that said, “out on lunch break. Please help yourself to any first aid supplies!”

Lance observed how irresponsible that seemed, but decided to let it be for now, since the blood was staining his towel. He swung the door open and stepped inside the clean white-washed office that smelled as much of chlorine as the rest of the park. There were some decorations, mostly photographs of the person he supposed was the medical staff member, visiting various locales around the world, although the way he was posing with some of the kind of uncomfortable-looking locals gave Lance the impression that he probably wasn’t anyone’s favorite type of tourist. This was further cemented by the intricate rug lain across the floor, decorated with what looked a bit like an Indian mandala with a twist, a series of circles lapping over each other, writings in an unfamiliar language scrawled along the flow of the pattern.

Lance sighed at the obvious appropriation and made his way to the desk, opening and closing drawers until he found what he was looking for-- some white rags to wipe away at the blood, and some medical gauze.

While he searched, though, he forgot he was holding his towel to his wound, and it fell to the floor, forgotten. Without him noticing, the blood continued to trickle down his leg, down past his feet.

When he stepped back after finding the gauze, some of it trickled onto the rug.

The pattern in the center began to glow a deep red, and whispering sounds seemed to come from inside of it.

Lance stepped back in horror, unable to look away from the hole of red light that was opening up in the center of the rug, swirling with black. And the whispering was getting louder, to the point that Lance was terrified that someone out in the hall would hear this.

A pair of black-clawed fingers appeared at the edge of the circle, digging into the pattern of the rug, and then a pair of arms followed, hauling a full body out of the circle. As soon as the being was all the way through, the glowing hole in the floor closed, and the rug that it had originally decorated was black and charred, completely unrecognizable.

The figure standing before him was impossibly beautiful, if a bit terrifying. It looked mostly human, but enormous black wings sprouted from its shoulders, the feathers sleek and glossy, fading to a shiny red as they reached the wingtips. It had a man’s body, with a delicately sculpted torso of lean but noticeable muscle covered by ivory pale skin. It was wearing loose black trousers that looked as if made of silk, but was otherwise bare, and Lance couldn’t help but stare at it.

Of course, that was also because he was backed up as far as he could go against the desk and was paralyzed in fear and surprise, but that’s neither here nor there. As soon as he’d first seen the creature, all of his desire to run away had disappeared, though he wasn’t sure why. He _knew_ he really, really should, because he’d seen enough horror movies to know that staying put in front of a monster was never a good idea, but there he still was, staring in awe at the being before him, and the way its curling dark-purple horns pushed their way out of the soft-looking black hair drifted across its shoulders.

Finally, his desire to run away overcame his desire to keep staring, and Lance tensed his muscles to explode into a run, out the door, and to the nearest security officer.

But just when he was about to take his first step, the figure opened its eyes and said, “you’re bleeding.”

Lance blinked. “Um… yeah.”

“That must be how you summoned me.”

“Uhhhh… what?”

“Didn’t you summon me just now?” the figure asked, thick black eyebrows furrowing as he frowned at Lance. It definitely had a male voice, but Lance knew better than to make assumptions about gender, especially with non-human creatures.

“No! I didn’t summon anything! I was just trying to get some gauze for my scrape. So, you know, I think I’ll just be on my way…”

“Wait!” the figure called out before Lance could move. “Let me.”

“Huh?”

“Whether by accident or on purpose… you summoned me, so now I don’t have any choice but to grant you a wish before I can go anywhere,” the figure grumbled, suddenly sounding impossibly human. “So… I might as well stop the bleeding.”

“Uhhhhhh… I guess?”

The figure floated over to him, landing delicately on the tiled floor. Now that he was out of the circle, Lance realized that the figure wasn’t actually that tall-- actually, he was just a bit shorter than Lance.

“How’d you get hurt?” the being asked.

“Uh… I scraped my leg at the bottom of the pool.”

The being snorted. “Graceful.”

“Hey, I was helping my friend, so you can shut up.”

The being didn’t answer, just crouched down and lay its hand on Lance’s leg, some of his blood touching its clawed fingers. It looked down at it for a few moments, then looked up at Lance. “Well? Are you going to give me the gauze, or not?”

Silently, Lance handed over the gauze, since he’d been a bit stunned from the brief moment he’d looked at the being’s eyes. A deep violet, flecked with stars. Definitely not human, but mesmerizingly beautiful. It made his chest twist in a weird way.

The being got to work quickly, surprisingly gentle despite its claws, dabbing at the wound with a cloth before wrapping it with gauze.

“So… who are you?” Lance asked, looking up at the ceiling so that he wouldn’t be caught off-guard again.

“I’m a demon. My name’s pretty hard to say with the human tongue, so… you can call me Keith.”

Lance’s heart jumped. “Wait, a _demon_?! Like, being-from-hell demon?”

Keith looked up at him again, frowning. “Yeah, of course. What other kinds of demons are there?”

Lance slapped his hand over his eyes, groaning. “Oh _man_ , I summoned a demon?! My mom’s gonna _kill_ me!”


	2. Demons and Humans

Keith raised an eyebrow. “After you summon a literal demon, you’re afraid your _mom_ is going to kill you?”

Lance flinched, dropping his hands and staring at Keith in horror. “Oh man, that’s right. You’re… you’re really a demon, aren’t you? With the… with the wings and the horns and the claws…” He swallowed. “What are you going to do with me? Now that you’re here?”

Keith noticeably hesitated for a long, long moment as he looked at Lance, then finally turned his eyes away, saying, “nothing. I’m here to grant you a wish. That’s all.”

Lance blinked. “A wish?”

Keith sighed, resting one hand on his hip and frowning. “Like I said before, once a demon is summoned, they _have_ to grant one wish to the person who summoned them, no matter what. That’s the bond of the summoning. Even _if_ the whole reason the demon’s summoned is because some idiot got blood on a carpet that happened to have a _summoning circle_ on it.”

“Hey hey hey,” Lance argued, his fear very quickly vanishing behind his need to defend himself. “It’s not _my_ carpet. I don’t know why this weird water park doctor has such a weird carpet in the first place. I was just in here getting bandages!”

Keith kicked at the charred remains of the rug in distaste. “My guess? Whoever gave him this rug was hoping he’d summon a demon by accident and get himself killed as some kind of poetic justice.”

“Wait wait wait, wait… I thought you said you just grant my wish, nothing else!” Lance argued.

“Well… it’s not like wishes with demons come free, idiot. Why do you think we’re called _demons?_  Every wish comes with a price. An eye, a leg…” his gaze turned wicked. “Sometimes even a soul.”

Lance’s growing confidence suddenly evaporated, realizing that deals with demons didn’t turn out very good, and his mother had already told him plenty of stories about _that_. Also that even though it was an accident, he was pretty sure summoning a demon was like, the _worst_ sin. But mostly, he didn’t really like the idea of giving up an eye, or his leg, and _especially_ not his soul. He liked those things right where they were, thank you very much.

“Well, I don’t really have any wishes in mind, so, uh… bye!” he managed to get out before taking off down the hallway at a dead sprint. He was pretty sure it was the fastest he’d ever run, probably fast enough to win that one track meet he’d finished last place back in his freshman year of high school.

He almost crashed directly into Pidge and Hunk, who were already fully dressed and had their swim bags slung over their shoulders. Lance skidded to a stop in front of them, looking all around him.

“Woah, Lance, what’s the rush?! Is your leg okay?” Hunk asked, reaching out to steady him.

“What? Oh, yeah, it’s fine. Let’s go.”

“But you haven’t even changed out of your swim trunks,” Pidge protested. “D’you really wanna go outside like that in the middle of winter?”

“I don’t really care!” Lance urged, pushing both of them forward while still turning his head to look in all directions. There was no sign of the demon anywhere, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “Let’s just hurry up and go! And never ever ever ever ever come back!”

“But what about senior year?!” Hunk protested, even as he stumbled through the doors that led out of the waterpark.

“We’ll go to a different water park! Now move it, big guy!”

The trio made their way outside, into the sunlight, away from the burned carpet, the bloody, forgotten towel, and the single black feather that drifted slightly down the hallway from the breeze made by the shutting of the door.

~

Lance was pretty sure he was free. Or maybe that he’d never seen the demon at all, and it had all been some kind of weird, pain-induced dream. Which admittedly seemed a bit unlikely, considering that the scrape _really_ hadn’t actually hurt that much, but… it was still the best explanation he had besides there being a _literal demon._

Lance had been stuffed full of energy ever since the incident at the water park, constantly glancing out the window for any sign that he was wrong, and it had all been real. Hunk and Pidge had asked him over and over again what had gotten him so worked up, and he’d had to think of a dozen ways to dodge the question. Because, as much as he loved and trusted his friends, he was pretty sure he couldn’t just up and tell them he had accidentally summoned a demon back in the medical office.

Actually, what scared him wasn’t that they wouldn’t believe him, but that they probably _would_. Well, maybe not Hunk, but Pidge would want _evidence_. She’d want samples, conversation, and a logical explanation. Which was part of what he liked about having her as a friend, but… the whole ordeal was exhausting enough without having to relive it again in explicit detail.

It had taken him ages to calm down again. After a few hours, hamburgers and a couple of alcoholic drinks at a local bar and grill, he’d finally relaxed enough to get the whole thing out of his mind.

He was actually in a pretty good mood, now, as he returned back to his on-campus apartment, not afraid to sing happily to himself as he came in, because he knew that all of his roommates had gone home for the weekend.

 _“_ _Tú me traes un poco loco, Un poquititito loco... Estoy adivinando Que quieres y pa' cuando… Y así estoy celebrandoooo; Que me he vuelto un po-_ CLEGH!”

The words choked themselves on the scream as Lance stared at the demon boy sitting calmly on his apartment’s living room floor.

“Y-you! Why-?! How… you can’t… you’re-you’re not... HUH?!”

Keith sighed, looking up at him with those disconcertingly violet eyes. “I told you before, I _have_ to grant your wish… which means I’m stuck with you until you make up your mind.”

“I don’t _want_ a wish! Not if there’s gonna be that kind of price! I’ll just get it for myself, so you can go ahead and do your whole demon thing to someone else, okay?”

“That’s _not_ how it works.”

“You’re the demon, aren’t you? Can’t you just… break the rules?”

Keith’s face contorted into a furious grimace. “Look, _I_ don’t want to be stuck with a stupid human boy who will start singing in Spanish after only two apple whiskeys, either, but if I want to come to the human world, I’m magically bound by the contract of the summoning. So whether you like it or not, I’m here to grant your stupid wish.”

“Hey, dude, I don’t know what I want to wish fo- wait, how did you know I drank two apple whiskies?”

“I followed you.”

“WHAT?! But I was watching for you the _whole_ time! You weren’t there!”

“Magic, idiot.”

“Like what?”

Keith waved a hand over himself, and then over the course of a few moments, his body began to go transparent, starting with the tips of his wings and then spreading to his body, and then continuing to fade out of sight, until he’d disappeared entirely.

Lance glanced around nervously. “But I could still hear you, right?”

“If I wanted you to,” said a voice so close to his ear that he could feel the breath of the mouth that made the words.

“UWAHHHH!!!!!”

Keith reappeared as Lance jumped away, clutching his ear. “You really are kind of pathetic, aren’t you? Look, I’m not going to do anything to you until you make your wish. Besides, usually the most you’d have to worry about is a pint of blood or something, because normally there’s no way you could _ever_ summon a demon as powerful as me with only a few drops of blood, especially without a proper incantation. But… there are some special circumstances.”

“Like what?” Lance asked, straightening up to pretend he had some kind of dignity left. He was starting to regret the apple whiskeys, because even though he wouldn’t really consider himself drunk anymore, he was still just buzzed enough for his head to be fuzzy.

Keith didn’t answer. “Just hurry up and make a wish… idiot…”

Suddenly his legs buckled underneath him, and Keith was lurching forward, heading towards a faceplant on the floor. Before Lance knew what he was doing, he’d stepped forward to catch the demon in his arms, saving him from the fall. “Woah, woah, woah, are you alright?!”

Keith groaned, scrunching his eyes closed and putting a hand on his forehead. He was sweating, and his face was flushed. “I shouldn’t have used so much magic right after getting summoned…”

“Huh?! I thought you said you were a powerful demon!” Lance shrieked, beginning to feel Keith’s weight pulling him down.

“I _am_. I’m… I’m a demon _prince_. I’m… the best.” He pushed Lance away and lurched forward, miraculously managing to stand upright.

“A… prince?”

“Uh-huh. So shut up and let me sleep, alright?” He started heading towards Lance’s bedroom, though how he knew which one was Lance’s, he didn’t really want to find out.

“But… if you’re a demon prince… why are you so weak?”

Keith glared at him out of the side of his eye. “ _You_ try crawling out of Hell through a hole created with nothing but a decorative rug and the blood of a moron.”

“Well, when you put it that way… HEY!” Lance shouted, recognizing the insult.

But Keith didn’t appear to have heard him, having crawled into the bed and pulled the covers over himself, wings and all, wrapping his black feathers around himself like a cocoon, although his face was left uncovered, the black hair spilling out over the pillow.

“I’m not a moron! And that’s _my_ bed! Hey! Are you listening to me, Keith?! I don’t care if you’re a demon prince or not, you can’t just--”

But Keith was already asleep, his eyes tightly shut and his breathing soft and even, just light enough that he wasn’t snoring. Which Lance thought was kind of unfair, because _he_ always snored when he slept.

Lance sighed. “But now where am _I_ going to sleep?” he muttered to himself, staring helplessly down at the demon boy asleep in his bed.

Now that he wasn’t moving around, disappearing, or talking about taking Lance’s soul… Keith actually didn’t look very frightening at all. He didn’t look so… carved from marble. He looked… human, despite the wings and horns. Kind of… soft, actually, with his sharp facial features despite his rounded cheeks. And super long black eyelashes that Lance was actually kind of jealous of, the way they cast shadows across his face, and… _damn_ he was pretty.

 _It should be against the rules for demons to be this attractive,_ Lance thought as he forced himself to look at something besides Keith’s face. He’d always thought demons were supposed to be hideous and creepy. He’d never thought they’d look anything like this… like… dark angels.

He remembered his mother telling him, once, when he’d been bragging to his older brother that he was more handsome, that Lucifer had once been the most beautiful angel in heaven before he’d fallen. At the time, she’d been warning him that arrogance destroys beauty, but now, it made him wonder a bit about the things he “knew” about heaven and hell. Supposedly, Lucifer’s corruption had taken away his beauty, but… what if that wasn’t true? What if that was just what people _wanted_ to believe, instead of admitting that sin is usually much more attractive than purity?

He thought about these things for a long time as he stared at the sleeping demon boy, before shaking his head and realizing that, demon boy or not, it was super weird to watch someone sleep. And also that he was getting _way_ too deep into the whole religion thing.

Finally, he got up, going to his closet to dig up a set of spare blankets he usually only used for picnics, but they’d have to do for now. He laid the thickest one out on the bedroom floor, then tried to cover himself up with the rest as well as he could, hoping that maybe his body heat would warm them up a bit as he slept.

If he _could_ sleep. He couldn’t seem to turn his brain off, ending up just staring at the ceiling for a long, long time.

 _A wish, huh?_ He thought. What _would_ he wish for, if that was the only thing to rid him of this demon? Maybe if he wished for something small, the price wouldn’t be that bad. Like… a chocolate cake. Or no… vanilla. Maybe marble?

But wouldn’t that be a waste? Would it be better to just wish for something big, and just deal with whatever sacrifice he had to? That’s what a good person would do. But was he really… brave enough to do that?

Eventually, he managed to drift off in the midst of his ponderings, dreaming about wishes, black feathers, and violet eyes.

~

*Keith*

He woke up with a start, remembering where he was.

He rubbed his eyes, looking around. The curtains of the room were open just a crack, enough to let him see the dim gray of early dawn peeking through. He’d been asleep quite a while, then. He still felt a little bit tired, but not as bad as he’d been before.

The room was dark, but his night vision was almost perfect, allowing him to make out the whole place with absolute clarity. The laundry bag hidden away in the back corner behind the dresser, the computer desk strewn with grocery receipts, notebook paper, and haphazardly deposited textbooks. And the tall wardrobe topped with dozens of trophies, its doors stuck with ribbons. Mostly archery, to his surprise, and most of them fairly high-level. A wide sampling of silvers, with a few golds scattered here and there.

He glanced down at the boy they belonged to, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe you’re not as pathetic as I thought,” he breathed, pushing off the blankets to make his way out of the bed as quietly as possible, drifting slowly down next to Lance’s place on the floor.

There was a slight whistling sound coming through his nose, and he was frowning as he slept, which was oddly endearing for Keith. It had been his first time seeing a real human in a long, long time, and he was still a bit stunned by how fragile they were, how clumsy.

He remembered, when he’d first emerged from the portal, freshly escaped from the palace attendants pursuing him, only to be greeted by this lanky, frightened, and bleeding boy. It had felt like a joke. A complete waste of his immense strength. And yet… this boy, this… Lance, was his salvation. His savior from a future he didn’t want, but didn’t have the courage to face. He owed him a great deal.

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. The more Keith looked at him, the more endearingly human Lance seemed to him, from the way he lifted his arm to cover his eyes as he slept to the way he curled his body into a ball to ward off the cold.

But humanity wasn’t just fragile, Keith knew. It could also be strangely strong, even when completely unmatched. He still remembered sea-glass blue eyes glaring fiercely at him as he argued, _“Hey, I was helping my friend, so you can shut up._ ”

The thought made him want to laugh. Back in the demon world, no one would ever _dare_ say something like that to him, and yet he had heard it from a _human_ almost immediately.

Lance shifted in his sleep, removing his arm from over his eyes to pull the blanket more tightly over his shoulders, although he was still shivering slightly.

Finally, Keith sighed, and very slowly, gently, he slid his hands under the boy’s back and lifted him, blankets and all, into the air, and carried him over to the bed Keith had vacated.

Lance stirred in his arms, and Keith froze, unsure of what to do if the boy were to wake up and realize what was happening. But instead of waking up, Lance turned to press closer to Keith, his expression smoothing out until he looked relaxed and peaceful. Beautiful, in a way different from any demon or angel Keith had ever encountered. It made him feel as if there was a second pair of wings fluttering away inside his heart, and he hesitated to put Lance down.

Finally he decided to go halfway, and sat down on the bed himself, arranging the blankets so that they covered Lance entirely. And still the boy slept peacefully, even as minutes ticked away into hours.

Only once the morning sun had risen all the way into the sky did Keith dare to slip away, afraid that Lance would wake up, still cradled in the arms of a demon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Lance is singing is "Un Poco Loco" from Coco!  
> And yes, Lance is an archer. It's just one of my favorite Lance headcanons, so pardon me if this fanfic indulges that. ;)


	3. The Rule of Law

To his surprise, Lance didn’t feel sore or stiff at all when he woke up, and instead was quite warm and comfortable, so much so that he neglected getting up for quite some time, leaving his eyes closed as he turned his face towards the rays of morning sun spilling through his window. Soft, cozy, warm… so nice. He loved his bed.

Wait.

He snapped his eyes open and bolted upright, looking around his room.

It appeared the same as always, except for the rumpled blanket laid out in the middle of the floor.

 _Maybe… it was all a dream?_ He thought, pulling his legs out from under the thick mound of blankets.

But no-- there was the white of the medical gauze carefully wrapped around his leg. That part definitely hadn’t been a dream, which meant that the black-clawed hands that had done the wrapping weren’t a dream, either. Which meant…

He winced, but didn’t see the black-winged demon anywhere. Maybe he was still there, just invisible, like last time. Or maybe he’d gotten sick of Lance and had decided to pester someone else. Maybe. A guy could hope.

He stretched thoroughly as he got up, mentally preparing himself for whatever the day had to offer. Briefly, he wondered how he’d gotten into bed, when he was certain that he’d fallen asleep on the floor. Maybe he’d sleepwalked. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But usually sleepwalking left him feeling tired and sore, but Lance felt more well-rested than ever, almost impossibly so.

He’d dreamt, at first, of frightening things. A great wave of purple-black water emerging from nothing and then crashing down upon his family home, his nieces and nephews still inside. Angels of gold and white clashing with angels of black and violet in a roiling gray sky, all of them bearing the faces of people he knew.

But at some point, the dream had shifted, and he’d dreamt that he was sitting in front of a warm fire, singing softly as he looked up at the stars. His family was with him, his mother tapping her foot as his father strummed his guitar, and it all felt intensely safe and warm and familiar.

The sight of the boy with the black hair rooting through his apartment fridge, however, was _not_ familiar.

Empty food containers were strewn out across the kitchen counter, Tupperware scraped clean of the leftovers they had previously held, bread bags emptied of all but crumbs, an entire gallon of milk, previously full, totally emptied.

Lance stared in horror at the carnage. Just how much could this guy _eat?!_

Suddenly, Lance remembered hearing somewhere that demons could be purified with salt. Or maybe that was ghosts? Either way... it couldn’t hurt to try.

As casually as possible, Lance made his way to his personal pantry, rooting around for the big container of salt he kept in there for whenever he wanted to make pancakes. If Keith noticed him, he didn’t show it, as busy as he was sifting through the remaining contents of the fridge.

So as soon as Lance had the salt in his hand, he spun around, shouted, “demon, get out of my fridge!” and sprayed the salt in Keith’s direction.

Keith turned toward the sound of Lance’s voice just in time to get a face full of salt.

“Wha-Blegh!” He blinked the salt out of his eyes, taking an angry step toward Lance. “What in Hell do you--!”

In self-defense, Lance tossed more salt at him and backed away a bit, holding the salt out in front of him like a shield.

This did make Keith halt a little, but it wasn’t really having the effect that Lance had hoped. Keith didn’t seem to be in any more pain than the average person would be after getting salt thrown directly into their eyes. Instead, he just seemed to be getting angry.

Lance frowned down at the salt container in his hand. “Damn. Guess the salt thing’s just a myth.”

Keith continued rubbing at his eyes, then glared fiercely at Lance. Which was twice as frightening now that his eyes were bloodshot.

“Were you trying to _exorcise_ me just now?!”

“Uh… maybe?”

“I can’t believe you! You rude, ungrateful, deceitful creature! How _dare_ you!” Keith shouted, standing up to his full height and stepping forward so that they were nose to nose. “If I weren’t bound to you, I swear by the fires of Hell I’d…” He stopped, shaking his head. “Salt might work on a bottom-level demon, but you’d need a _real_ exorcism to get rid of me. Unless you just hurry up and _make your damn wish!_ Stupid human.”

“Would you _stop_ calling me ‘stupid!’” Lance shouted, closing the salt container.

“I’m only identifying the truth.”

“Oh yeah?! Well I’m only trying to not go to Hell, and I think that means not just sitting back and _watching a demon eat my roommates’ food!_ ”

He gestured at the fridge, which was now completely empty. “Look at this! How am I gonna explain this to them?!”

“I got hungry,” Keith answered matter-of-factly.

“Oh, yes, absolutely. I’ll just say, ‘hey, Charlie, Nick, and Danny, I have a new pet _demon_ , and he got hungry so he ate the entire contents of our fridge. Sorry!’”

“I am not your _pet_ ," Keith growled.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘Demon Prince.’ Whatever. It’s not like they’ll believe me, either way.”

Keith looked up at him quizzically. “Why not?”

“Because demons aren’t _real!_ ” Lance shouted, throwing his arms wide. “Or… they’re not supposed to be. They’ll say I’m crazy, maybe even insist that I go to a psychiatrist, and I don’t need that right now. I can’t afford to miss my next competition, or the school won’t give me a scholarship next semester.” He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “So just… help me clean up this mess, okay? And from now on, just eat the food that _I_ buy. I get as many meals as I want at school since I’m an athlete, so I’ll be fine.”

“Alright.”

Neither of them moved.

“Well? Help me clean up,” Lance demanded.

“No.”

“Why _not?!_ ”

“Look at me! I have so little dignity _left_ … I can’t just grub around on the floor.”

“What? So little dignity? What do you--?”

And then it clicked. What was so wrong with this picture. The beautiful black-and-red wings, the curling violet horns… they were gone. Keith looked… human.

“Woah! Did the _salt_ do that?!”

“Of course not, idiot!” Keith crossed his arms, glaring at him. “The portal must have been so weak that I left much of my demonic power behind. So now all I’m left with is… this.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “I think you look fine. And besides, I can definitely tell that there’s still something special about you.”

Keith blinked, stepping back just a bit in surprise. “Special? How?”

Lance smiled, surprisingly softly. “Your eyes. No one has eyes like that.”

Keith swallowed, then looked away, a light pink tinge in his cheeks. “Well… I guess…”

“And, now that you’re not quite so ‘great and powerful,’ you’re not above cleaning up a mess, right?” Lance added, his soft smile turning to one of annoying delight. “Now come on, Demon Boy. I still have to practice today.”

~

Keith grimaced and tugged at the collar of the sweatshirt he was wearing as he followed behind Lance. “This material is rough.”

“Well… it’s what we have to work with until I _buy_ you more clothes. And just so you know, we’re just going to Goodwill. Nothing fancy. You’re already the most expensive accident I’ve ever had.”

“I would have been fine in my own clothes,” Keith grumbled. “And you wouldn’t have to buy me anything if you’d just hurry up and make a wish.”

“And I’ve already _told_ you, I don’t know what to wish for!” Lance answered exasperatedly. “So give me some more time to think about it, okay? And during that time, I feel responsible for you. I can’t let you just run around shirtless. It’s cold outside!”

Admittedly, Lance’s university sweatshirt looked pretty weird on Keith, especially considering that it was too big for him, the sleeves hanging loosely over his hands, but it was what he’d had.

As if in response, Keith shivered, and Lance sighed and unwrapped his scarf from around his neck and turned to Keith to wrap it around him.

“There. Cozy little demon.”

“I’m not a child.”

“I know. If you were, I think I’d be a lot more patient. At least children have an excuse.”

Keith glared at him as he turned back, adjusting the strap of the case slung over his shoulder. But once he was turned away, Keith brought his fingers up to the scarf and tucked his chin into the deep blue fabric, breathing in a lungful. It was an annoyingly, oddly pleasant scent, like vanilla and cloves. What business did this human boy have, smelling so pleasant to him and acting so kind?

Lance stopped at an open field and slid the case off of his shoulder, letting it drop to the snow-frosted ground. “Alright, we’re here. And I need to concentrate when I practice, so _please_ try and be quiet.”

When Keith didn’t answer, Lance shrugged and unzipped the case, procuring the worn-looking, but well-cared-for fiberglass bow from inside. He slung a quiver of matching arrows over his shoulder, slipped a special glove on, and then turned toward the target boards at the far end of the field.

Lance’s coach had always described him as a “surprisingly patient shooter.” He had never had any problem waiting for the shot to align with his breathing, the tension in the perfect combination of muscles in his arm, shoulders, and back, until the center of the target would come into perfect focus at the other side of the range.

He notched an arrow and gave the string an experimental tug before drawing it all the way back, focusing on the target, only the target. Just the target. Forget about the demon boy. Just for a few seconds, stop thinking about Keith, dammit!

Which was hard, because Keith had caught the attention of Red, one of the school’s famous “campus cats,” and was playing with it quite aggressively, a gleeful smile on his face. It was adorable.

 _He’s a demon He’s a demon He’s a demon He’s a demon_ , Lance kept reminding himself. _Just focus on the target. Deep breaths. Concentrate. Release._

The shot went _way_ wide, disappearing into the distance beyond the targets.

He cursed under his breath, then spun to look at Keith and the cat.

“I can’t _believe_ you. Red _hates_ anyone touching him. Legend has it that someone tried to rub his belly while he was taking a nap in the library, and he tried to tear her face off.”

Keith shrugged, stroking the sides of Red’s face. “Cats have an intimate connection to the demon world. They can see through any glamour, and can even walk between the barriers of the worlds fairly easily. This one must know my real identity.”

Lance glared at Red, silently cursing the cat for betraying him. His initiation to the archery team had entailed scratching Red behind the ears without getting bitten, and he proudly held the school record for fastest success.

“I thought we had a connection,” he grumbled to the cat. The worst thing was that Red was a super pretty cat, with a sleek coat of red-brown fur, hence his name. But no matter how pettable he looked, he was one big package of rage packed into a tiny little body. Lance was sure that the school only let him hang around because no one ever wanted to risk trying to catch him.

Tentatively, Lance reached out to stroke Red’s head, and was met with a low warning growl. He pulled back his hand, and Red instantly started purring again, even letting Keith _pick him up_.

“Well? Aren’t you going to practice?” Keith encouraged. “Based on that first shot, I think you need it.”

Lance grimaced and pulled out a second arrow, notched it, drew it back, and let it fly, all in one fluid motion. There was a satisfying _thwunk_ as it sank into the wood of the target, almost directly dead center of the yellow core. He turned back to Keith with a satisfied grin.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Not bad. I’m impressed.” He stood up, setting the cat down. Sensing that petting time was over, Red swished his tail and then trotted off toward the school’s fitness center.

“I _thought_ so. Though I guess since you’re a demon prince, you’re probably perfect at archery, too, right?” Lance said with a self-deprecating sigh.

“No. I’m a lousy shot. Don’t have the patience for it.”

Lance blinked, surprised at the nonchalant answer. “Oh. Well, then I guess this must be pretty boring for you, so--”

“No,” Keith interrupted immediately. “I enjoy watching you. You look… graceful. Please keep going.”

Lance felt a flush rise in his cheeks, and his fingers were a bit unsteady as he gripped the next arrow, glad that none of the rest of the team was there to see him like this. Demon or not, they’d definitely mock him for getting flustered so easily.

He got control of his breathing again, but was keenly aware of Keith’s eyes on him. It made his heart beat faster, a light sheen of sweat appearing on his skin despite the winter chill.

The arrow slipped through his fingers, barely hitting the wooden frame that surrounded the bullseye.

“Having problems?” Keith teased.

“Yeah, maybe if you stood in front of the target, I’d hit it perfectly every time,” Lance joked back.

But then Keith was moving, floating lightly above the ground and then over the fence that designated the shooting point, alighting just in front of Lance’s target and turning to face him. “Well? Shoot.”

Lance blanched. “Dude, it was just a joke. I’m not actually gonna shoot you.”

“Why not? Don’t you want to get rid of me?”

“Maybe, but people can see me shooting you! They’ll think it was murder!”

“No they won’t. I’m glamoured, Lance. The only ones here who can see me are you and the cat.”

“Dude, I’m _not_ going to shoot you.”

“Why not? Are you scared you’ll miss?”

“I could _actually hurt_ you!”

“I’ll be fine, Lance. Just shoot.”

Gritting his teeth, Lance pulled out another arrow and aimed it at the head of the demon, right between those beautiful, but intense violet eyes he had already memorized, even if too far away to see clearly. It was his best aim so far that day. It was so easy to focus entirely on Keith. But the more he looked, the more he wavered. His heart rate was speeding up, and he imagined himself letting the arrow loose, letting it fly, imagined it meeting its mark, and…

He squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his bow.

Keith frowned, floating back to him. “Why can’t you shoot? Just today you were trying to exorcise me.”

Lance shrugged, looking away. “I don’t know. I guess… I felt like if I shot you, I’d be more of a demon than you are. Even if you _could_ dodge, or whatever, I kept thinking that maybe you wouldn’t. I couldn’t live with that.”

“You think I don’t seem demonic enough?” Keith asked, intrigued as Lance began to pack away his bow and quiver.

“No. I guess… you just don’t really seem that _evil_ to me.” Lance stood, smiling tentatively. “And if you can do that magic trick to help me get my arrows back, I’ll buy you lunch.”

~

The Angel King, not to be confused with “God,” was not happy. He paced impatiently through the Great Hall, his great white wings sweeping the floor as he did so.

“Does he understand the political _importance_ of this wedding?” King Alfor asked, turning back for another pace. “It is not as if I want to sell off my precious daughter like a prize, but I felt I had no choice in order to stop another senseless two-hundred year war!”

The Demon King, not to be confused with “Satan,” frowned empathetically. “I’m sure my brother understands the political implications, King Alfor. He just… well, Keith’s always been kind of a wild card, even for a demon. You know that.”

“Yes, and I believe that you contributed to that, King Shiro, by allowing him as much freedom as you always have, since even before you ascended to the throne.”

Shiro sighed. “You’re probably right. But that doesn’t solve the problem we have _now_. You know the laws. A demon, once summoned, is bound to its master, regardless of its status. Keith didn’t exactly choose an _easy_ way out of this engagement.”

“Unless he is able to kill his master,” Alfor argued, stopping his pacing for a moment. “Bloody and unpleasant, but the truth nonetheless.”

Shiro shrugged. “Hey, demons didn’t make the rules, if you recall. But yes, _if_ Keith kills his master, we’ll be able to bring him back. But not until then.”

From behind King Alfor, Princess Allura stepped forward. “Father, if I may, I’ll retrieve Keith from the human world myself--”

“Absolutely not.” He turned to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I have every confidence that you are strong enough for the human world, my daughter, even when hidden in human form. But I need you here, in the demon realms. Our peace is tentative at best. If you go, the demon court will see it as the angels hunting down their prince. Is that not correct, King Shiro?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Shiro sighed. Running a hand through his silver-and-black hair, he turned to the attendant at his side. “Malthias, what do you suggest?”

“Only the Demon King has the power to open a portal to the human world from this side,” Malthias reminded him. He was a somewhat unassuming demon, with wheat-colored hair and green-tinted skin contrasted by slitted yellow snake’s eyes. “But you yourself cannot leave your responsibilities. Maybe, Shiro-- er, Your Majesty, you should send me into the human world. Since at least Keith knows me, I might be able to convince him to… finish... his contract and reconsider the engagement.”

Slowly, Shiro nodded. “Alright. I’ll open the door, and send Malthias through. Hopefully he’ll be able to help Keith break his contract and return to complete the wedding.”

“That is, _if_ he even wants to,” Allura muttered. Having known Keith since childhood, she knew that the alternative was absolutely a possibility.

“Yes, _if_ he wants. But this is all I can do. Will that work for you, Angel King Alfor?”

King Alfor stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Just… do try to avoid the solution that ends in bloodshed.”

Malthias bowed, but he was grinning. “I will do my very best, although it’s not up to me. Then, I’ll be on my way.”

~

Malthias stepped out of the portal into a white room dark with night time. Moonlight played through the windows, turning the white tiled floor, the whitewashed walls, and the photographs stuck to the desk all to spinning quicksilver.

It appeared to be a regular doctor’s office, washed free of any visible signs of contamination, let alone that of a demonic summoning. But this was most certainly the place that Keith had been summoned. He could still sense the prince’s energy crackling in the air, though he was sure the humans would sense nothing more than extra static electricity. Still, his hair stood on end.

Keith was definitely powerful, there was no arguing that. Even with his power cut in half, Malthias was sure he wouldn’t stand a chance against him in a fight, despite having worked hard to hone his combat skills in a short amount of time to earn his spot just behind the King. He hoped it wouldn’t come to combat, though.

He glanced at the watch counting down the time he had in the human world before his powers began to fade the same way Keith’s had. Shiro had warned him before sending him through: _You’ll only have three days to bring him back, or you’ll lose a lot of your magic. After that, you may not have enough power to open the doorway on your own._

He swallowed, figuring that he’d better get to work before that happened. First, though, he needed to find Keith. He could still sense his energy in the room, but he could tell that the prince hadn’t been there in some time.

He stepped over to the window and gathered the threads of moonlight in his hands, wrapping the silver strands around his fingers. They shimmered with magic, even as he cast them about the room.

They spun themselves together like glowing spiderwebs, replaying the events of the prince’s summoning in the shape of silver shadows. A rug that had once covered the now-bare floor; a tall, thin boy. _Lance_ , the moonlight told him. His leg had been injured, based on the way the moonlight puppet was pressing a cloth to its leg. And then the towel had fallen, and the boy had stepped back. And then the moonlight spun itself into the shape of Keith, hauling himself out of a portal far too small for him, standing before the boy in his full glory.

Malthias watched intently. Then, as he watched Keith’s puppet go to his knees before the human, he blinked, breathing in sharply. _He’s treating his wound?_

Malthias swallowed, then waved his hand, dispelling the puppets. The strands of moonlight returned to the window, flickering just as normal.

 _This doesn’t make sense_ , Malthias thought, biting the inside of his cheek and staring intensely at the place the prince had gone to his knees and tended a human’s wounds.

“I’m going to need to understand more about this human before I act further,” Malthias said out loud, mostly to get the gears in his head turning. “But if I go directly to him, I’ll run into Keith, too. He’s probably already sensed my presence, but if I go to him immediately, he’ll be far too suspicious to listen to anything I have to say. I’ll have to be indirect.”

Malthias glanced at the watch keeping track of his countdown and sighed. Already ten minutes passed. He needed to be patient, but there was only so much patience he could afford.

He glanced out the window again and saw the moonlight play off the surface of the artificially blue water of the indoor waterpark, diluted even more by the huge glass dome overhead. But it gave him an idea of how to find a connection to this _Lance_.

The moonlight showed him two friends with the boy. A wave. The small one crashing into Lance.

Malthias paused the play-through, tapping a finger against his side as he looked at the moonlight-puppet of the girl. _Pidge._

“Yes, she’ll do nicely.”

~

Malthias twirled his finger in the air, spinning open the window lock from the other side without touching it, before pushing the window open and slipping inside.

It was a musty-looking room, as if it hadn’t been used in a while. It looked fairly clean, but as if the occupant had intended on coming back sooner, but had been gone longer than anticipated. There were still photographs tacked to the corkboard hanging above the desk, still sheets on the bed, but there was no real sense of life, aside from perhaps whoever came in here occasionally to rid the room of dust.

He glanced around at the pictures, recognizing immediately that this room did not belong to this _Pidge_ , his target. An older brother, maybe, based on their physical similarities. “Matthew Holt,” the stacks of mail scattered across the surface of his desk declared him, among an entire pile of college acceptance letters.

“Impressive,” Malthias remarked to himself, flipping through them. He’d been in the human world much more recently than the prince, so he was familiar with a lot of the names, many of them fairly prestigious institutions from around the world. One of the acceptance letters, though, was tacked up on the cork board along with the photographs, with a big smiley face drawn in black marker next to the school’s name.

 _Ah, so he’s in grad school_ , Malthias mused, a plan forming in his mind. It wouldn’t take much magic at all to do this. A few unanswered messages on the answering machine. Some suitcases brought over from a nearby store. And, of course… his appearance.

Malthias studied the most recent of the photographs carefully before making the change, fading the green out of his skin, and concealing the yellow of his eyes behind a layer of melanin brown. Finally, he glamoured his clothes, too, changing his demonic robes to the hoodie sweatshirt belonging to the university Matt had chosen.

At last, Malthias studied himself in the mirror. His hair hadn’t changed, but he figured it was similar enough already to be believable. It was merely a bit longer than Matt’s had been in the photograph. Otherwise, he was a perfect copy of Matthew Holt.

He smiled to himself, for a moment letting the glamour drop to show his demonic fangs. “Wonderful. Now, only to find the sister…”

~

Pidge kicked off her shoes at the door, yawning, “I’m home.” It was still dark in the living room, so her father must have stayed late at the lab again. So... pretty much normal. And her mom was away visiting relatives, so there was no one to welcome her home, as usual.

“Pidge! Welcome back!”

Pidge froze, suddenly seeing her brother in front of her. “M-Matt?”

“Yeah! I came back from Germany for a presentation here in the States, and thought I’d stay at home for a while. If that’s okay?”

“MATT!” Pidge shrieked, jumping to hug her brother, wrapping her arms around his neck on purpose to drag him down to her level. “Jesus, I wondered if you’d ever come back!”

Matt choked a little, but grinned. “Yeah, I got a bit caught up in my studies. Sorry, Katie.”

She let go, pushing him away, her smile turning into a quizzical frown. “Why didn’t you _call_?”

He gestured toward the phone. “I did. I guess no one was home to get them, since it was kind of last minute, and you were apparently at the waterpark yesterday…”

“Oh, yeah, I guess… and then today I forgot my phone at home, so…”

“Yeah, I’m here now! Just for a few days, though. So how ‘bout you? How was your annual ‘waterpark bonanza,’ huh?”

She shrugged, making a face. “Kinda short this year, since Lance went and scraped his leg in the pool.”

Matt leaned against the doorframe from the kitchen to the living room, listening with interest. “Oh, really? Was it bad?”

“I guess. He went to the park’s medical staff to get a band-aid, but he came out all freaked out. I wonder if he saw a bug? I dunno, he wouldn’t really talk about it.”

“Did you ask him?”

Pidge raised an eyebrow at him. “No, I just received the information through magical telekinesis. Of _course_ I asked him. But he didn’t really want to talk about it, so I didn’t push… much. Actually, I was gonna push more, but Hunk told me I needed to lay off to let Lance cool down. Anyway, tell me more about grad school! Is the professor awesome? Are you having a hard time with your thesis?”

Matt laughed. “Woah woah woah, one question at a time, Pidge.” He plopped down on the couch casually, patting the seat next to him. “Hmmm, I don’t think there’s much to talk about. Probably the same as regular college, actually. I just have to learn German, now.”

“Hmmm… that doesn’t sound hard. Maybe I should try.”

“Hey hey hey, you’re still in college, and you _already_ skipped two years. Give Mom and Dad a break!”

She laughed. “I guess I’ll wait just a bit. I need to help Lance and Hunk, anyway. Well, help Lance, and help Hunk finish our partner project. It’s gonna be great! You think you can come to our exhibition?” she asked, excitedly.

“Hmmm… I’ll try! No promises, though. So… how is Lance doing, then? Still thinking more about girls than studying?”

“That’s what he wants everyone to think, but I’ve seen his room. He actually studies pretty hard. And practices more than anyone on the team. He doesn’t admit it, but I think he’s terrified of getting kicked out of school.”

“Really? Why?”

“‘Cuz he’s the first in his family to be able to go, duh. And our school’s super high-class, so he’d never be able to afford it without his archery skills. But on the flipside, only pretty high-class schools even _have_ archery teams most of the time, so…” she paused, sitting down next to him and tilting her head curiously. “Did I not tell you that?”

He frowned. “Maybe? On the phone?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You _forgot_ about the _one_ time you actually videochatted me?”

He winced, pretending to shield himself from her. “I’m sorry! I’m still a little jet-lagged!”

“Uh-huh. Well, to make up for it, you’re gonna go to the freezer and get some ice cream to celebrate you coming home.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he complained, getting up. “Chocolate chip?” he asked, ruffling his hair.

“Peanut butter, dude. Always peanut butter. You know this.”

“Just testing you.”

As he turned to go to the kitchen, Pidge watched him intensely, tapping her fingers against the coffee table.

There was something off about Matt, she could tell. In most ways, he was the same, down to the way he always switched back and forth between calling her “Katie” and “Pidge.” His laugh was the same, his voice, his way of talking. Yet…

Maybe it was the way he walked, the gestures he made. And maybe it was how strangely interested he was in Lance, instead of asking her about her project with Hunk, like he normally would have. What they were making, what it was supposed to do. That’s what he would usually have asked her about.

Yes, there was definitely something not quite _right_ about her brother, and something, maybe intuition, told her that Lance’s freak-out at the waterpark was related. How, she wasn’t sure, but she planned on waiting patiently in order to find out.

Pidge, as usual, was in for the long haul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter got so long! I needed to get some world-building in. I hope it's interesting!


	4. Swirling Emotions

In the middle of the night, Keith sensed a powerful, but familiar presence. His eyes snapped open, and he quickly sat up and looked around, gathering his thoughts out of the haze of sleep. He hated showing it, but he felt exhausted all the time since coming to the human world. Probably mostly from keeping himself glamoured from all human eyes except Lance’s almost 24/7.

There was no one else in the room, he could easily tell from his vantage point in Lance’s bed. Still, knowing that Malthias was in the human world, and nearby, worried him. Not that he couldn’t easily take Malthias in a fight, but… his presence meant that Shiro was looking for him. And as much as he loved and respected his older brother, he wasn’t ready to go back yet. He had his reasons.

He waited for a long while, keeping his senses alert for any sign of Malthias drawing any nearer. But instead, his presence began to draw further away.

Slowly, Keith let himself relax, hearing the sound of snoring coming from the other room, where Lance had declared he was going to “sleep on the couch, since there’s a demon in my bed.”

The thought made him smile, and he shook his head, remembering that Lance was only his “master” out of convenience, and accident. Still, he wondered if he should warn Lance about Malthias’ arrival, since he was undoubtedly going to appear soon.

 _No_ , Keith decided. _I’ve made him worry enough_. He and Lance had spent the entire day together, first with lunch, and then shopping, first for clothes and then for food. By the time they were done, Lance was having a hard time carrying all of the bags, and would occasionally pause and frown down at the receipts before stuffing them back in his pocket.

Yes, despite his complaints, Lance had done quite a bit for him already. He’d just have to deal with Malthias on his own when the time came.

~

*Lance*

After a simple breakfast of scrambled eggs and rice (because it’s cheap and easy to make, okay?), Lance got his gear together and prepared to head back to the archery range. Keith began to follow, and Lance sighed. “You don’t have to come with me _everywhere_ , do you?”

“No,” Keith shrugged. Then he grinned. “But if I don’t stay with you, I might miss a chance for you to slip up and say ‘I wish'.”

“Oh, so it doesn’t work if I just say I want something? I actually have to wish for it?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Lance pondered this, turning away from Keith and humming to himself, hearing the footsteps behind him and deciding to allow them.

On the way to the archery range from Lance’s on-campus apartment, he smelled an enticing aroma that he absolutely could not afford after the previous day’s spree, but couldn’t resist.

“I want coffee,” he insisted, swerving toward the coffeeshop doors. He set his bow case down on the front step and attached it securely to a bike rack with a bike lock. Which seems kind of weird, but hey, his bow was probably the most expensive thing he owned, so he didn’t want anyone stealing it. And it’s not like he could take it inside the stores, since it was technically a _weapon_ , so this was the best alternative he’d been able to come up with.

No one batted an eye when he held the door open for Keith, even though apparently they couldn’t see him, thanks to his ever-present “glamour.” Which made him sound way fancier than he actually was, since Keith had insisted on buying the red jacket from Goodwill despite the fact that it was too small for him, and was of course already wearing it. Not that anyone could see _that_ , either.

Keith looked around the room in fascination, rising into the air so that he could look over people’s shoulders at what they were reading, studying, laughing at, or to perch on the rafter of the building. Lance watched him do this, then realized that a few people were following his gaze, trying to figure out what he was staring at.

He forced himself to look away, waving at the tall woman with large golden hoop earrings standing behind the counter. “Hey, Shay, can I get my usual?”

She shrugged, grabbing a large cup and beginning to scribble on it. “Twenty ounce vanilla mocha latte with an extra shot of espresso, extra chocolate, whole milk, and enough whipped cream to fill the Great Pyramid?”

“Oh, you know me so well.”

She rolled her eyes with a smile, and got to work making the drink. He began to zone out again, hearing the familiar sounds of the coffeeshop around him.

Keith alighted next to him, looking carefully at all of the foods, without saying anything. Out of the corner of his eye, Lance watched him as he took in each confection in turn, before stopping at the triple-berry ice cream. He didn’t say anything, but Lance could tell he wanted it. He was good at noticing these kinds of things.

“Hey, Shay, when you’re done with the mocha, can you get me two scoops of the triple berry ice cream?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Ice cream, Lance? Aren’t you going to practice?”

“I just can’t control myself,” he half-lied, immensely enjoying the pleased surprise playing across Keith’s face as he discovered that Lance had been watching him.

Shay finished making the drink and sprayed an absurdly large spiral of whipped cream on top of the cup before setting it on the end of the counter and moving to the freezer to scoop out the ice cream.

“I’m assuming this is going under your athlete points?”

“Of course.”

She shook her head in mock disapproval, then handed him the ice cream. “There you go. Student ID, please.”

Lance dug in his hoodie pocket, pulling out an extremely worn plastic rectangle. It had a large bend almost directly down the middle that Shay attempted to smooth out a bit before sliding it through the machine.

She frowned, running it through the machine again. “It’s not reading your card, Lance.”

“What? But there’s still plenty left on it.”

“No, it is not even recognizing that there _is_ a card. I think you need to buy a new one.”

“Aw, man… I’m the only person I know who never lost their card since Freshman year… and what about my ice cream?”

“Sorry, Lance. Unless you have a friend who wants to hold onto it for you until you get back from buying a new card…”

Before she was done speaking, Keith reached out and laid a hand on the back of the computer. It whirred a bit, and then beeped, and the transaction total flashed across the customer-side display in slightly flickering green numbers.

Shay blinked. “That was… quite strange. But… alright. Perhaps the computer is just running slowly today. But you really should get a new card.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it later today. See ya!”

He began heading back towards the door, reaching over to hand the ice cream cone to Keith. But then he stopped, realizing that although the people in the coffeeshop couldn’t see Keith, they’d be pretty stunned by an ice cream cone floating in mid-air.

“Um… Keith… d’you think you could take off the invisibility?” he whispered.

Keith nodded, beginning to wave a hand over his body, but Lance stopped him. “I meant like, outside! People will freak out if you appear out of nowhere, dummy!”

Of course, people were already staring at Lance talking to himself, but that was besides the point.

Keith rolled his eyes, walked out of the room, and then came back around the door.

Based on the way several pairs of eyes drifted immediately to him when he re-entered, Lance supposed he was visible to everyone, now. Many people looked intrigued by the newcomer, not that Lance could blame them. He was just happy that none of them had seen Keith when he’d _first_ arrived, the way Lance had seen him. He felt oddly pleased by the idea that he was the only one who knew Keith’s true form.

He handed Keith the ice cream, and he happily started to take big munches out of it. Lance felt like he should warn him about the ice cream headaches, but… nah. He was too cute.

“Hey, Lance! We’re back!”

Lance spun and saw his trio of roommates grinning at him from the doorway to the coffeeshop.

His heart began to pound, his head spinning through ways to explain that there was a demon sharing their apartment now.

Nick observed Keith standing next to Lance, and Lance couldn’t help but notice his friend scan him from head to toe. “Who’s this, Lance?”

Lance bit his lip, wondering how to answer. His first instinct was to go cliche and say that Keith was his cousin, but for some reason, that felt extremely weird to him. Besides, would anyone actually believe that Keith was even remotely related to him?

“Uh, he’s a new transfer student… Keith. Darren asked me to show him around over the weekend.”

Charlie turned to Keith, interested. “Oh, you like archery?”

“Not… really,” Keith answered, apparently more interested in the ice cream than he was in Lance’s roommates. “I’m more interested in hand-to-hand and fencing.”

The three boys all expressed their interest in this, telling him to give them some lessons, or show off, asking if he’s one of those bad boys who got in fights all the time.

“...I guess you could say I’m a ‘bad boy,’” Keith answered. Lance snorted, and when Danny looked at him curiously, he covered his mouth and explained it away as accidentally letting a bit of his drink down the wrong pipe.

“Well, we’re heading to archery practice. You’ll get to see _real_ experts at work, if you wanna come watch.”

“I’ve already watched Lance practice. It’s interesting.”

“Yeah, well, that’s different. He’s a dork,” Charlie joked, reaching over and ruffling Lance’s hair.

“Oh shut up,” he joked, pushing Charlie away. “None of you would have even _gone_ to Nationals if it weren’t for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, ‘I’m the backbone of this team,’ we’ve heard it before,” Nick joked, giving him an affectionate shove. “Anyway, you should come! You can tell us about fencing!”

“...Sure, I guess,” Keith answered around a mouthful of ice cream.

They walked quickly out of the coffeeshop, all grabbing their bows from the doorstep and strolling out, not waiting for him at all as he stopped to unlock his bow case from the bike rack. They just kept walking, chatting away with Keith between them, practically pushing him forward.

Lance hurried to catch up, finding himself isolated at the back of the group. But he didn’t push it, just watched them a bit sourly.

He supposed that was part of the reason he’d never really considered Charlie, Nick, and Danny his “friends.” They were a perfect unit he’d always found himself just a bit outside. Usually because of small things, so tiny he doubted they even realized them. Like how unconcerned they were that their bows would be stolen. Why should they be concerned? After all, their families were wealthy enough that they could just custom-order another one. Lance didn’t have that option. His father had saved up a portion of his earnings for six years just to buy him that bow when he’d won his first championship in high school.

His roommates weren’t bad people, and he liked them well enough, but although they all practiced archery, he never felt like he’d ever really been on the same wavelength as the rest of them. After all, usually archery was a sport for the wealthy.

Keith paused, looking back at him. “Why are you back there, Lance?”

“Huh? Oh. nothing. Just thinking.”

But then the boys were ushering Keith into the archery range, getting out their bows and showing off. Lance got ready more slowly, taking the time to check every string and gear before stretching out his back and shoulders thoroughly. For a second, he thought he saw Keith watching him, but he turned out to just be frowning at his empty ice cream cone. Which Lance was annoyed that he was disappointed by.

The boys’ conversation with Keith continued, and Lance noticed that his face lit up when he talked about “fencing,” which sounded a lot different from what the fencing team at their high-class university did. It sounded more like a cross between medieval drama and a horror film. Was Lance surprised by this? Absolutely not.

Still, he was having a hard time concentrating, because it felt like his roommates had completely forgotten about him. Like, sure he’d always felt a little bit separate from them, but he’d still _lived_ with them for almost three years now. You’d think they’d show at least a _little_ concern.

His shots almost all went wide, although not quite so much as the previous day. Which, of course, Nick and Charlie couldn’t leave alone.

“Wooow, look at the grand champ! You haven’t even touched the yellow today! 100% blue. If that’s what you were aiming for, Lance, you aced it!”

He grumbled at them, but wasn’t able to rectify it afterwards. He shot arrow after arrow, none of them seeming to go where he wanted. Finally, the guys decided that they were going to go back to the apartment. Lance watched them go, then notched another arrow into his bow, determined to get at least one good shot in before he called it a day.

 

~Keith~

He watched in silence as Lance practiced, fascinated by the shape of him, his little gestures, as he shot. The way he would give the fingers on each hand a little flex before he would pull back on the bowstring. The way he would dig the toes of his front foot just a bit into the dirt before aiming. The deep exhale, a small swallow, and then release. It was the exact same, every time, though he wasn’t even sure if Lance knew he did all of these things when he shot, each one of them different from how the others had.

“You’re still here?” Lance asked him as he set his bow into its holder and strolled across the green to retrieve his arrows from the target. “I thought you were making friends. They even invited you to have some drinks with them.”

Keith heard bitterness in his voice, but he wasn’t sure why. “I don’t really like drinking because I have a hard enough time controlling myself as it is. But I want to stay on their good side, since they’re your roommates. It’ll get complicated if they decide they don’t want me to be with you.”

Lance snorted, returning back with his quiver refilled, and picked up his bow again, repeating his form. But he seemed somehow more relaxed, now, moving even more fluidly from one gesture to the next. Dig in with his front foot. Shallower breaths as he notched the arrow, and then a deep inhale as he drew the arrow back, flexing his fingers, first on the left hand where they gripped the handle, and then his right hand, where they held the arrow. The deep exhale. A small swallow, and then release.

The arrow plunged deeply into the yellow center of the target.

“YES! I still got it!”

“Got what?”

“The awesome sauce, duh.”

Despite the confusion Keith was certain he was displaying on his face, Lance didn’t decide to explain further, sliding his bow back into his case, and then running back to retrieve the arrow.

“I forgot that it’s my turn to water the flowers in the greenhouse today!” he suddenly shouted, hurrying to deposit the pieces of shooting gear into their appropriate spaces in the bow case. He picked up his phone, glancing at its screen. “Oh, a text from Pidge…”

He unlocked the screen and scanned through the message. “Wow, Matt came back?! Yeah I’ll definitely have dinner together!” He started tapping at the screen quickly, an action that Keith had only discovered over the past two days meant that he was writing a message back to his friend. But then Lance paused, looking up at him. “Hey, do you want to meet my friend Pidge?”

“Is he the one you got yourself injured for?”

“ _She_ is, yeah. I figure I can’t keep you a secret forever, so I might as well just tell her. I would tell Hunk first, but he’s out for winter vacation with his family, so I guess it’s Pidge first. So how about it? Wanna come to dinner? Pidge says Matt’s buying.”

Keith shrugged. “Dinner’s fine. Who’s Matt?”

“Her older brother. He’s been away in Germany for a while, getting his Master’s, but he came back last night.”

Keith felt a bit of dread in the pit of his stomach, but once again kept it to himself. He’d never really liked coincidences. Mostly because he didn’t believe they actually existed.

 

He followed Lance through the campus grounds, toward the greenhouse, looking around at the scenery. It was still a lovely institution, if a bit lacking, thanks to the winter chill. He wondered what it would look like when the trees and grass were lush with leaves.

Lance was jabbering on about his classes, and how he had to take Biology because it was a general education course, but he’d forgotten to take it earlier, so now had to take it as a junior. And the class project was the garden…

A deep, but soft meow rang out, and Lance immediately stopped, dropping to a crouch. “BLUE!” he called out toward the bushes. “Hey girl, you’re looking fine today!”

Which sounded like a cat-call. Well, maybe it kind of _was_ a cat call, since Lance appeared to be talking to… a cat. Specifically a large, fluffy gray one with huge, luminous yellow eyes. It bounded up to Lance, jumping up into his arms. He stood, scratching the cat’s head and grinning.

“You see this? Now _this_ is a good cat.”

Blue closed her eyes and leaned into Lance’s hand, purring.

Keith shrugged. “She is a pretty cat.”

“Not just pretty! She’s gentle, and affectionate, and most importantly, she loves me.”

Blue appeared to agree, stretching herself up to rub her face against Lance’s cheek, several times, until Lance started to giggle. “You’re getting your snot on me, Blue! Gross!”

Finally, she settled down again, resting her paws over Lance’s shoulder, still purring, her tail swishing lazily through the air under Lance’s arms.

Lance seemed irrationally happy at the sight of this cat, Keith thought, his smile the biggest Keith had seen it since he’d arrived in the human world. But it didn’t annoy him. They looked like a suitable pair.

“You can pet her, too,” Lance suggested, stepping toward him. “She’s pretty friendly.”

Keith hesitated, not wanting to disturb the peace between the boy and the cat, but finally relented, reaching out to stroke her fur. He paused before her face, letting her sniff his fingers, and then she leaned forward to rub her face against his hand.

It felt nice, to be accepted by the same animal that appeared to adore Lance so much. Maybe they had something in common. Though he wasn’t sure what. Since, based on Lance’s description, he wasn’t very similar to Blue at all. He was much more similar to Red.

“Don’t get too attached. She’s mine!” Lance announced, pulling the cat away from Keith’s touch. “Well, not _mine_ mine, since she’s one of the campus cats, but she might as well be mine, because we’re _best buddies._ ” He kissed her head, and then let her go. She rubbed against his legs, and then began to stroll off, sitting down at a distance and beginning to clean her fur.

“Anyway, here’s the greenhouse. Please be careful when you go in, though. There’s a big pot of peonies by the door.”

Keith had a feeling that Lance just enjoyed saying “pot of peonies,” but didn’t say so.

He looked around as Lance got to work, going to the far corner and unraveling a hose, giving the water spout a few turns, until Keith’s extra-sensitive ears could hear the water traveling through the hose. It was a rather large greenhouse, much more than he expected to be cared for by a regular biology class. Many kinds of flowers bloomed inside, despite the season, and on the other side, several varieties of fruits and vegetables were growing in carefully maintained structures.

He paused at a rosebush in the corner, whose leaves were drooping, and its dark red petals beginning to fall. “This one looks like it’s dying.”

“What?! CRAP!” Lance ran over, stroking the rose petals with his hands. “Man, this is probably because I was supposed to water them yesterday, but totally forgot because _you_ showed up… the rest of the plants seem okay, but roses are super picky…”

He ran a hand through his brown hair, revealing a little widow’s peak at the top of his head that Keith found quite endearing, though he didn’t say so. “Man… what am I gonna do?”

Suddenly he brightened, spinning towards Keith. “Hey, it’s probably a sin to ask you to use your demonic magic, but can you, like… make it healthy again?”

Keith hesitated, then swallowed, focusing on the rose so that he wouldn’t look at Lance’s face. “I can. But I won’t.”

 

~Lance~

“Why _not_?” he asked, trying to think of how much his grade would drop if his professor discovered he’d neglected his turn to take care of the greenhouse.

Keith reached out and plucked the drooping rose off of the bush, rolling its stem through his fingers and staring at it fixedly. “Because it won’t fix anything. It will just make it worse.” His voice was oddly soft, as if they were words he didn’t want to say.

“What do you mean?”

“When I’m away from Hell, demonic magic is always temporary,” Keith answered, finally looking up at him, if only for a moment, allowing their eyes to meet. “Unless it’s to fulfill a human’s wish.”

Lance tilted his head, looking down curiously at the rose. “So it would turn back?”

Keith bit his lip, frowning at the rose. “Not just that. It… well, let me show you.”

His brows furrowed in concentration, the rose beginning to glow in his hand, sending soft violet light dancing across his face. It made him look even more beautiful than usual, if that was even possible. It took physical effort for Lance to look away from him, and at the rose, like he was supposed to.

As he watched, the rose began to change. Its leaves elongated and hardened, their color deepening, then fracturing. The rose itself, too, seemed to deepen in color and then crystallized, scattering even more light across Keith’s face.

The magic violet light faded away, and in his hand, Keith held an exquisitely beautiful rose crafted entirely of diamond. The afternoon sunlight streaming in through the glass ceiling landed on its deep red petals and danced in all directions, over Lance’s hands, and the green of the leaves and stem, too, turned the whole room into a palace of specks of light.

Lance’s breath caught in his throat. It was beautiful, and perfect.

“Do you like it?” Keith asked him, handing him the diamond rose.

“Uh, um, yeah. It’s gorgeous. Incredible. I, well…” he cleared his throat, cradling the flower delicately between his palms. “Is this _real_ diamond?”

“Yes and no. Watch.”

Before his eyes, the crystalline structure began to melt away, the specks of light spread out all over the room flickering out one by one. Keith closed his hands around Lance’s, his voice sounding far away over the sound of Lance’s heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

“Without a wish to sustain it, my magic doesn’t just fade away… it leaves whatever I used it on worse off than it was before.” To demonstrate this, he opened Lance’s hands again, and there was the formerly deep red of the rose flower, withering away rapidly until so dry it felt like paper, and a dark, unpleasant brown. Lance let it fall to the ground, stunned. He looked up at Keith, trying to think of what to say.

“It’s the demon’s curse,” Keith explained sadly, as if he took Lance’s lack of response as an accusation. “Maybe why humans think we’re only good for destruction. After all… if everything you try to fix is just made worse, then why don’t you just destroy it on purpose, instead?”

There was an intense sorrow in his voice that made Lance’s heart ache for him. It was an old sorrow, one borne of experience, twisted together with a guilt Lance didn’t think he needed to feel. What was evil about that kind of sorrow? What was evil about something you couldn’t even control? And what had happened to Keith the last time he’d been summoned to make him sound like this, this deep, ancient pain that filled Lance’s eardrums and bored its way deep into the hollows of his bones?

Keith stared sadly at the withered rose on the floor between them, and Lance gazed at Keith, feeling an intense mix of emotions he couldn’t name. Individually they were things like _pain_ , or _fear_ , or _hope_ , or even _desire_ , but all together they swirled around his head and settled in his heart, blocking out all other thoughts.

Finally, Keith pulled his hands away, breaking the spell Lance had found himself under, before reaching out to a marigold on the nearby table, snapping it off, and then reaching up to tuck it into Lance’s hair. Lance froze, stunned by the contact, by the gentleness, knowing full well that his face was turning bright red.

“In the demon world, things are only beautiful because we make them that way,” Keith said, stepping back, his eyes hooded under his dark eyelashes. “Diamond roses like that one are the only flowers there are. But here… things are beautiful just because they _are_. Even if that means that they die. They’re… better that way, I think. But I can still bring the rose plant back to health if you want. If you want to use your wish for that, at least.”

Lance considered it, then shook his head. “No. I’ll use it on something else.” His voice sounded thick, and he was having a hard time looking at Keith again. “Thanks for the offer, though. And, um… the flower.”

Keith nodded, mumbled something about waiting outside until Lance was finished watering the flowers, and then hurried back out the door, not looking at Lance once.

Lance reached up to gently stroke the silky, yet waxy petals of the marigold in his hair, still feeling heat in his face. If he was feeling what he _thought_ he was feeling… he hoped he was wrong.

He hurried to finish his tasks, then rushed outside. He didn’t see Keith at first, then noticed him standing by the dumpster, mostly full of old pizza boxes.

“Does it smell bad? It’s annoying it’s right by the greenhouse, huh? Kinda throws off the whole vibe.”

Without a word, Keith lifted his left hand and snapped his fingers.

Instantly, the contents of the dumpster ignited into a roaring flame, so hot that even from his distance, Lance felt like his skin was being scalded. The fire leapt into shapes: a rearing horse, a flying dragon, a rising phoenix…

Then suddenly the flames died as fast as they’d risen, leaving behind a pillar of smoke. All of the contents of the dumpster had been completely reduced to ash, and the smell nothing but burning. Keith turned, walking past him.

“See? I can destroy things just fine.”

Lance looked at the wreckage for a while, noting the way the green paint on the inside of the dumpster had entirely melted away, and the metal itself had melted at the corners, some of it dripping onto the sidewalk below.

It was quite an image, yet Lance was sure he’d only gotten a glimpse of Keith’s power. He knew he should be frightened, but...for some reason, he wasn’t. He kept thinking about the diamond rose that Keith had crafted so lovingly in his own fingers, the way it refracted light so perfectly, the warmth he’d felt when Keith had closed his hands around Lance’s, the feeling of Keith’s fingers in his hair, if only for a moment, so intimate and careful.

He reached up and touched the marigold in his hair again, checking to make sure it was still there. He was starting to acknowledge that maybe, the things he was feeling weren’t that mysterious at all. Maybe he knew exactly what they were. Maybe, just maybe, he might have a slight, tiny, minor-not-major and probably just temporary, not new or special at all… little itsy bitsy crush on Keith, the Demon Prince.

How could he not, when faced with someone so powerful, and yet somehow incredibly gentle?

 

~Keith~ 

To his surprise, Lance hadn’t taken the flower out of his hair, even after they started heading to the family restaurant they’d agreed to meet Pidge and Matt. Sometimes, Keith even noticed him reaching up to touch it, his fingertips just brushing the red-orange tips of the petals, before letting his hand drop back to his sides.

Lance was humming with some kind of strange energy, rolling onto the balls of his feet and singing softly under his breath. He was practically dancing as he walked, and not all that badly. He had good rhythm, and decent kinesthetic sense, his arms and legs shifting smoothly from one step to the next. And then he would touch the flower again, and then glance at Keith.

Keith felt a bit strange. He wasn’t sure why he’d decided to put the flower in Lance’s hair. It had just been on a whim. He’d originally been planning to just discard it after having made his point, but, knowing that it was Lance’s responsibility to care for the greenhouse, he felt bad just throwing it away. And somehow, it just looked _right_ sitting there amidst Lance’s curling brown hair, the shades of yellow and orange and red brightening his whole face.

Lance paused, turning back to him. “Hey, Keith… if _you_ could have one wish granted, instead of me… what would you wish for? Do you know?”

Keith didn’t have to think about it. He knew exactly what it would be.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I… don’t.” He smiled, stuffing his hands in his hoodie pockets and pulling one back out, revealing a shiny new quarter. “I never have.” He started flipping the coin over in his fingers, watching it catch the sunset in the silver. “It’s too much for me, when I’m given the chance. My head gets all muddled. Maybe it’s because my mamá always said not to ask for too much when we said our prayers every night, because God was busy. So I’d always ask for just two things. One was always small, like vanilla ice cream. And the other, I thought was something big, like… winning Cuba its first medal for archery when I make it to the Olympics. Because there was no ‘if’ when I was a kid…”

Lance was babbling, not really thinking about what he was saying, Keith could tell, but he continued listening, even though he didn’t answer. It was Lance’s first time actually explaining why he refused to make a wish, so Keith didn’t want to interrupt him.

“But when I can only make _one_ wish, I go back and forth between the two. Maybe I’m wasting the wish if I’m asking for something too small, or I’m asking too much.” He laughed, turning back to Keith, the sunset behind him matching the flower in his hair. “But maybe I’m just not thinking big enough. Do you think you could actually do world peace?”

Keith pondered this. “I don’t think so, since life in this world depends on conflict. The most I could do is put everyone to sleep for eternity and call it 'peace' as a technicality.”

Lance sighed. “Guess there’s no taking the easy route out, huh?” he grumbled, sticking his hands back in his hoodie pockets.

“There’s never an easy route,” Keith answered, just above a whisper.

“Yeah, I’ve kinda figured that out. It’s just worse, now, I think. Now that I could actually _get_ what I wish for, you know? It has to be the perfect wish. Since, you know, when I actually do it, I’ll probably never see you again, right?”

There was a quiver in his voice, a kind of barely-concealed fear as he said this that made Keith’s bones turn to liquid. He almost ran into Lance, who had stopped along the sidewalk to look back at him. And they were standing close to each other, for the first time all day not breaking eye contact.

Keith felt a sudden, incredibly powerful urge to kiss him. It hadn’t been the first time, by any means, but it had been a much easier urge to repress, before. Now, it was overpowering. And it wouldn’t be that hard to do, either. Just a little tilt upwards to meet those lips, his eyelids falling closed, his heart pounding in his ribcage as he waited for Lance to push him away at any moment, inevitably. But he didn’t.

“YOUR HIGHNESS!”

Keith leapt away from Lance, baring his claws. Just down the street, next to the restaurant Keith suddenly realized was the one they were supposed to be meeting Lance’s friend Pidge, was a pair of siblings with straw-colored hair, one boy, one girl.

And one was not as he seemed.

Keith could _smell_ Malthias hiding behind the face of this human, and it annoyed him. Or maybe he was just annoyed that he’d been so damn _close_ , and then Malthias had interrupted him.

“Before you start, _Malthias_ , I’m not going back,” he stated clearly, making a deliberate attempt to keep himself between Lance and the other demon.

The two humans with the straw-colored hair came closer, and then the younger one, the girl, who Keith decided must be Pidge, ran to Lance.

Behind him, they started talking quickly, about who the people with them were, because Pidge had never seen Keith before, and Lance was pretty sure that by the way Keith had greeted Matt, it probably _wasn’t_ Matt, and Pidge admitted that she already knew that, but…

“Keith, _please_. I know you don’t want to marry Princess Allura, but this is ridiculous! Do you have any idea what Shiro’s had to do to keep the courts from revolting?! Some of them are blaming the angels for your disappearance!”

From behind him, Keith heard Lance squeak, “WHAT?! ‘Marry?!’ ‘angels?!’”

 _Shut up, Lance_ , Keith willed, though he knew that unless he put force into the thought, it wouldn’t do anything.

Malthias stepped forward, his disguise melting away. “I thought if I gave you a reason to meet me, you might not run away. Because… I totally get it, Keith. We gave you a responsibility you didn’t want, and it was unfair to you. So you escaped to the human world, using this one, because he was convenient. But…”

 _No. Don’t say it!_ Keith willed, this time using magic to force Malthias’ mouth shut.

It didn’t work. Malthias pushed through the enchantment, saying, “even if he was convenient, you could have killed him at any time, and freed yourself. There was never even a protective circle! You could have killed him the moment you were summoned and then be left free to roam the human world. But he’s still alive!”

Keith _felt_ Lance cringe, felt the way his eyes were boring into him in horror. Forcing himself not to think about how much that stung, he shrugged. “I just didn’t feel like it.”

Malthias sighed, shaking his head. “Look, Keith, I don’t want to have to force you to end your contract, but I _am_ under orders. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. So, nothing personal, Malthias, but I’m gonna have to refuse.”

Malthias stepped back, seeming to pull a silver staff out of nothing. Moonlight, Keith remembered, was Malthias’ specialty.

“You have to do your duty, Keith. This isn’t just about you and Allura, you know.”

“I know. It never was.”

He leaped forward, and the battle began.

 

~Lance~

He was still a bit stunned by the idea that Keith apparently had a _fiance_ , and a princess, to boot, when the fight began. And quite a fight it was. At first, Lance thought Keith was outmatched, since he was weaponless, while Matt had the silver staff, but that fear quickly melted away when Keith ducked Matt--Malthias’ staff, grabbed him by the arm, and then threw him to the ground hard enough to crack the pavement.

“Holy sh-- Lance, have you been hanging around with a _demon_?!” Pidge shrieked, as Malthias got back to his feet and picked up his staff, swiping at Keith, who dodged again, summoning a lightning strike, which crackled through him and electrified the demon who looked a lot like Pidge’s older brother, Matt.

“What about you?! You _knew_ this guy wasn’t your brother, but you invited us to dinner _anyway_?!”

“I had to figure out what you were hiding, and this seemed the fastest way!”

The battle flashed from ground, to sky, to the rooftops. From lightning to fire to ice to gravity, so much happening at once that it was hard for Lance to watch. He was glad that not many people were walking around outside just then, thanks to the cold, but he really, really hoped that Keith had glamoured himself _before_ getting in the fight, because otherwise anyone who happened to look out their windows just then would get quite a shock.

“You don’t even hate Allura!” Malthias shouted, summoning a rain of iciciles out of the air and thrusting them toward Keith. “She’s your friend! You’re making things hard on your brother!”

“I’m forcing him to reconsider a different option!” Keith shouted back, snatching Malthias’ staff and swinging it around until he was down on the pavement, held down by the weight of the staff.

Both looked exhausted, but Malthias was more beat up, bleeding a deep purplish-red in various spots, and gasping for breath. “I knew from the beginning that you were stronger than me.”

“Yeah yeah. Send my brother my message when you get back to him,” Keith jeered, raising the staff up, as if to thrust it back down suddenly, to plunge it through Malthias' heart.

“WAIT!”

Pidge was running away from Lance’s side to stand in front of Keith, glaring up at him fiercely. “Are you going to _kill_ my big brother?!”

Keith blinked, surprised. “In a way… yes.”

“Well, I can’t let you do that. He’s injured. I’m taking him back home with me.”

“But… he’s not actually your brother…”

“I don’t care,” Pidge replied firmly. “He’s my demon, my responsibility. You can’t fight him when he’s injured. Got it?”

“W-well… alright, then,” Keith answered, not seeming to have any idea how to respond to Pidge’s ballsy determination.

Without waiting for a response, Pidge leaned over and swung Matt-Malthias’ arm over her shoulders, hauling him to his feet. She stopped, turning back to Lance. “Sorry, we’ll have dinner some other time,” she suggested. “And you have a _lot_ to explain.”

She began to haul Matt away, seemingly quite uncomfortable with his size compared to her, but Lance knew better than to try and help her when she didn’t want it.

As soon as she disappeared around the corner, Keith collapsed.

 

~Keith~

 

He woke up to warmth, vaguely conscious of moving, and the smell of marigolds.

Lance was carrying him on his back, his hands tucked under Keith’s thighs to keep him from falling.

It made him feel so small and fragile, being carried like that. It should have been humiliating, but… it wasn’t. He felt safe, cared for. Still, he groaned, lifting his head off of Lance’s shoulder to look around.

Lance paused for a second. “You’re awake?”

“I guess.”

“You passed out. Guess even all that destruction isn’t easy, huh?”

“No.”

“So… what was all that back there? Were you… supposed to get _married?!_ To an angel princess?!”

Keith grimaced. “Yeah. It’d been arranged since we were kids. For a long time I just kind of accepted it, but… the older I got, the less I really wanted to marry Allura.”

Lance continued walking, adjusting Keith’s weight on his back a bit. “Why, was she… mean? Or not pretty?”

Keith rolled his eyes, though he knew Lance couldn’t see it. “It’s not about that. But no, everyone always said that Allura was insanely beautiful, even for an angel. And intelligent and powerful and strong.”

“She sounds perfect,” Lance remarked, his voice dreamy.

“Yeah, I guess she is,” Keith answered, not even trying to hide the irritation in his voice. “But to me, she was just a bossy older sister, I guess. Everyone always said that she was too perfect for me, and I knew they were right. I loved Allura, always have, but… not like that. So when the opportunity came… I ran.”

Lance snorted, a jolt Keith could feel through Lance’s back. “Gee, might be nice if I had a beautiful woman I had no choice but to marry.”

“I don’t think she really wanted to marry me, either,” Keith answered, although he felt a smile spread across his face, even as he settled his forehead against the back of Lance’s neck. But the smile faded as he realized that both of them had been avoiding the most important topic, but it was still hanging heavily in the silences between words. Someone would have to say it.

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” Keith asked, closing his eyes and breathing in Lance’s scent of sweat and vanilla and cloves and marigolds, and hoping it wouldn’t be the last time he had the chance to smell it. “After what Malthias said about the summoning circle… now you know that there’s nothing stopping me from killing you at any time.”

“Well, yeah, I guess,” Lance answered, shrugging and tilting his head a bit to look over his shoulder at Keith’s face. “But so could a car. A train. A dedicated duck.”

Keith couldn’t help but laugh, even though it kind of hurt a bit to do so.

“Besides,” Lance continued, “if I used that kind of thing… you’d be like a prisoner, right? Like a bird in a cage. I don’t want to do that to you.”

Keith fell silent, absorbing the words and letting them settle inside the hollows of his heart. What a wonderful person, who couldn’t even bear to enslave a demon. Maybe even more wonderful than an angel.

Closing his eyes again, Keith wrapped his arms tightly around Lance’s stomach and buried his face in his back, breathing in the scent of vanilla and cloves, and realized suddenly and painfully that he may just be in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got SUPER long. And I have class tomorrow... oops. But I really wanted to share this with you all before I went to bed!
> 
> Blue's behavior is based on my own cat, though not her appearance. Just like my cat, Blue's quite the attention-whore lol. Like "Red," her name comes from the color of her hair. Technically, the term for gray-haired cats is "blue".


	5. Attempted Kisses, Attempted Murder

~Malthias~

He woke up to his “sister” poking him in the face impatiently. She was frowning, a bottle of clear liquid in her other hand.

He groaned, coughing. “Wha-? What are you doing?” He coughed again, but he could tell one of his ribs was probably cracked, from the way pain spasmed through his chest when he did so. It would heal quickly, but for the time being it was extremely painful.

“I need you awake to answer my questions.”

“Can’t it wait?” Malthias grumbled, turning his face away from her.

“Definitely _not_.” She crossed her arms, glaring down at him stubbornly. “Because I need to clean you up before you bleed on the carpet. So is demon biology similar to humans? Do you have any allergies?”

“Yes to the first one, no to the second.”

“Okay.”

He closed his eyes as she got to work, ignoring the sting as she poured a liquid from the bottle onto his cuts, which bubbled and fizzed until she wiped them away. Then there was a burning pain as she dabbed at them with a cloth, the smell of it telling him it was some kind of toxic alcohol. She was a little clumsy with it, obviously not any kind of medical expert, but was relatively efficient, moving from one task to the next without any hesitation.

She dropped a pack of ice on his black eye and then stepped back to survey her work. “Well, that’s about as much as I can do. How ya feel?”

“About like I got trampled by a herd of wildebeest.”

Her expression turned dark. “Don’t you _dare_ joke about that. Mufasa didn’t deserve to die.”

Malthias blinked. “Who’s Mufasa?”

“Wha-? You… oh. Nevermind.” She sat back in a nearby armchair, kicking her legs up in the air as she did so. “I forgot that you weren’t Matt for a second, there.”

“When… did you find out?”

“Pretty early on,” she admitted. “I give you props, though… Malthias. You were pretty well-prepared. If you wanted to get into acting, I might go see your movie if I got free tickets.”

He grimaced. “That doesn’t sound that much like a compliment.”

She shrugged. “You can take it however you want.”

Malthias rolled over onto his back so that he was looking up at her. “Why’d you save me? If you knew I was a demon… why didn’t you just let him destroy me?”

“Well, first of all, I didn’t know you were a _demon_ , I just knew that you weren’t my brother. But you seem okay. And if you stick around, you can answer questions, but if he killed you, or whatever, I’d be left not knowing what the hell was going on. So… y’know, please don’t kill me, but I’m okay if you hang out here, at least until my actual brother comes back.”

Malthias looked at her for a while, then dropped his uninjured arm over his eyes, holding the ice pack in place. “I owe you my gratitude… Pidge.”

“Nah, don’t mention it. Just tell me everything you know, and we’ll call it even!”

He snorted. “It’ll take me centuries to tell you everything I know.”

“Guess you’d better get started, Malthias.”

“Matt.”

“Huh?”

“I liked… being called Matt. It’s a good name. Nice and short. If it makes you comfortable… you can call me that, instead. At least until the real Matt comes back.”

“Hmmm… fine. You get to be Matt #2, though.”

He smiled. He enjoyed this human. “I’ll take it. So? What do you want to know?”

 

~Keith~

He was far too exhausted to glamour himself, let alone fly in through the window, so he had no choice but to let Lance carry him through the door of the apartment, pretending that he was asleep and that he didn’t see the way Nick’s eyebrows raised when he saw the two of them come through the door, didn’t see the way Charlie’s mouth puckered ever so slightly into a frown as he watched Lance kick off his shoes and trudge toward his room.

“I wanted him to relax a bit, so me and Pidge took him out for drinks, but he’s a total lightweight,” Lance lied, and not all that convincingly. “Passed out before we knew what to do with him. So is it cool if he stays the night?”

There was a short silence, but to Keith’s senses, it may as well have stretched on forever. But then finally, Danny looked back at the electronic game they were playing on the living room TV and said, “yeah, whatever man, but if he blows chunks anywhere, you’re cleaning it up.”

“Gross. Does anyone actually _say_ ‘blow chunks’ anymore?” Keith heard Nick ask, before Lance made it into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

“You think you can stand?” Lance asked him, his voice soft.

“I just need some rest. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Oh… alright, then…”

Lance went over to his bed, pulled back the blankets and sheet, then turned around so that he could safely lower Keith onto the bed without completely dumping him. Keith couldn’t help but feel surprised at how practiced Lance seemed to be at doing this.

Finally, he felt Lance stand up, so gently sliding his hands over Keith’s where they held on tight to his abdomen, that Keith felt his grip relax almost against his will, and then he was falling back into the pillow with even more exhaustion than he’d thought. His eyelids were already getting heavy, which he hated. If he were at full strength, he could have defeated Malthias without this humiliating display of weakness, but… he didn’t have a choice. And if he hadn’t arrived in the human world the way he had, he wouldn’t have been able to hold that boy in his arms at all. It was too much for him to hope for. And yet…

“You know, this is _your_ bed,” he grumbled, as Lance got up off of the mattress toward the closet, pulling out the extra blankets again.

“I think you need the sleep more than I do,” Lance argued.

“Don’t be stupid. I’m a demon, I can sleep anywhere.”

“You’re a _prince_ , so I’d feel bad if I let you sleep on the floor!”

“I thought you didn’t care if I was a prince?”

“Just shut up and go to sleep, okay? You’re already _in_ the bed.”

“There’s room.”

Lance froze, the blanket he’d been holding falling to the floor. “What?”

Keith scooted backwards to be as close to the wall as he could, then lifted the blankets over his head to reveal the space he’d made. “I know… you probably don’t like the idea of sharing, but… it’s still probably more comfortable than the floor.”

Lance bit his lip, looking for a long while at Keith, and then the space in the bed. “I… um, I’m gonna take a shower first.”

Quickly, he grabbed a pair of sweatpants from his dresser, then hurried out of the room. For a moment, Keith thought he saw the tips of his ears just a bit pink, but he wondered if that was just wishful thinking.

He knew he shouldn’t be feeling this way. Eventually, he’d have to go back to the demon world and face Shiro and Allura. Once that happened, he knew that his attachment to the human world would be severed. Of course, it wasn’t like he hadn’t had a _plan_ when he’d shoved his way through the portal that was _supposed_ to be summoning a gremlin, but all of that had completely disappeared since he’d met Lance. He could only hope that Shiro finally understood the message he was trying to send, before Malthias or whatever other demon forced him to return.

He fell asleep again, but it was restless, hardly anything capable of recovering him. But it meant that he woke up easily when he felt the blankets being lifted off of him, and Lance beginning to tuck his long, thin limbs under the covers, sliding in with intense care, believing that Keith was still asleep, and unwilling to wake him up.

Keith opened his eyes just a sliver, just enough to see Lance’s face, without it looking like he was awake. The human boy was shivering a bit-- it was chilly in the apartment, and he was only wearing his sweatpants, having forgotten a tank top in his haste-- and he moved entirely reflexively toward Keith’s body heat, then scootched back so that he wasn’t touching Keith. But there really wasn’t enough room on the single-person bed for that.

Keith watched through his eyelashes as Lance peeked upwards at him, his cheeks and ears unmistakably flushed this time, so much so that he could identify it, even in the darkness of the room. He could feel the tension Lance was holding in his whole body, trying to share the space without touching him, without making the situation any more intimate than it already was.

It was too much for Keith to ever possibly bear. Everything in him was aching to just reach out and wrap his arms around those shoulders, to pull him close and feel his warmth and his breath and run his fingers through that brown hair, and kiss him senseless, kiss every part of his face, from the brown freckles on his cheeks to the deep red flush in the tips of his ears.

And then, Lance sighed and moved closer, fitting his body into the curve of Keith’s chest. He was still looking up at Keith’s face, and Keith could feel the intensity of his heartbeat through the mattress they were sharing.

With his left hand, Lance reached up, as if to run his fingers through Keith’s hair. But then he stopped, pulling his hand back.

 _Please, don’t hesitate. Please, tell me that I’m not the only one feeling this way_.

He doubted Lance could hear his thoughts, but somehow it worked. Lance lifted his hand again, just running the very tips of Keith’s hair through his fingers.

“Wow… it’s just as soft as it looks…” he heard Lance murmur, the breath of the words stirring at Keith’s collarbone and making his heart flutter. He knew Lance was only doing this because he thought Keith was asleep, but Keith was so _aware_ of Lance’s presence that he wasn’t sure he could go back to sleep, even despite his exhaustion.

“Maybe… as long as he doesn’t wake up… it’ll probably be okay?” Lance was saying to himself, as he settled into the hollow of Keith’s arms, smiling just a bit to himself. Finally, the muscles in his body began to relax, and the more they did, the more he seemed to mould into Keith’s form, as if he’d been created there.

The urge to kiss Lance in that moment was so overwhelming that Keith couldn’t bear it anymore. It would ruin the illusion that he was asleep, but… he wanted it so bad it pained him.

He began to lean forward, inhaling, fluttering his eyes closed, wondering what Lance would say.

He heard a slight high pitched whine, and opened his eyes to see Lance leaned heavily against him, already completely asleep.

Keith came to a complete halt, unable to keep himself from suddenly feeling considerably annoyed, but knowing it would be cruel to be angry at Lance for shutting down something he hadn’t even known Keith was about to do. Although the fact that this was the _second_ time he’d been foiled wasn’t helping anything.

Besides, he was far too adorable to disturb, Keith thought, with the little, satisfied smile Lance wore as he buried his face in Keith’s shirt, the fingers of his right hand twisted into the bedsheet just above Keith’s hip.

He wouldn’t kiss him while he was asleep. It didn’t feel right. He’d have to try again some other time.

So he just sighed and resigned himself to his fate as a demon hopelessly in love with his human master. What an absolute disaster he was.

But at least, as long as Lance was asleep, he could allow himself just a little bit of freedom, so that the ache he was feeling didn’t keep crushing all of the air out of his lungs. He could allow himself to unravel his arms from the blankets and wrap them around Lance, pulling him even closer.

It was the most comfortable the bed had been yet.

 

~~

As everyone is well aware, at night is when the demons stir.

The whispers carried across the cosmos like a scent on the breeze, passed from the hands of the wicked things that lurk in murky water, waiting to punish the unsuspecting traveler. The willow o’ the wisps that drown anyone who strays from the path in unlit woods. The things that lurk in closets, under beds, around corners, always just out of sight, just out of our perception, but never, ever quite forgotten.

And perhaps they are not so powerful as any demon prince, but they are always there, always here, waiting for their chance to rise above their miserable status as creatures of haunting, of horror, most without name. But unlike the demon prince, they knew the human world well, because they always existed in it. After all, there are some evils that can never truly be purged from any world, neither heaven nor earth.

And ever since the demon, Malthias, had appeared, they knew that the prince was there, among them. And weakened, by his foolish decision to come through a portal unsuited for himself. Had he forgotten that they were there, always waiting for a victim, for power? They had no need to return to the demon world. But if they had power, they could escape their miserable existence as mere shadows, and remind humans how to fear. They craved human fear like a starving lion craves meat, and they were willing to do whatever they had to do to get it.

The status of a prince meant nothing to them. Demonic laws meant nothing to them, here on Earth. If Keith the demon prince could not protect himself, then that was his problem.

But he had better prepare. Because all the while he slept, all of the evils that remained buried in the earth, rustling in the leaves, floating in the wind, and churning in the waters… were coming for him.

 

~Keith~

He woke up first, untangling himself from Lance’s limbs without disturbing him, not easy to do, since all of Lance’s respect for personal space seemed to disappear entirely once he fell asleep. Actually, Keith had hesitated to move at all, because Lance was sleeping so soundly with his head on Keith’s chest, his hand wrapped in the fabric of his t-shirt, as if he couldn’t move close enough. But Keith had to remind himself not to project his own desires onto Lance’s behavior. He was probably just cold.

But as soon as he managed to get out of the bed, carefully replacing the blankets over Lance’s shoulders, he went to the window, peering out.

Even from there he could see the primordial demons flitting from branch to branch, turning to look towards him as the humans they had attached themselves to passed by.

He sighed. Thanks to humans’ penchant for throwing caution to the wind and summoning demons without any real safety measures, there were always plenty of leftover demons scattered about the human world, who had managed to use their wiles and meager powers to destroy their foolish masters. Once they did, they were free to roam, usually looking for more victims.

The balance of power between the demons and the angels, though, ensured that none of these wandering souls were particularly powerful. It was extremely rare that a demon of Keith’s caliber ever got summoned at all, and even when they were, it was only ever done by extremely talented magicians, and even if they _were_ able to kill their masters, they were sure to get exorcised quickly as soon as they made trouble. And Keith knew from experience that a true exorcism was not very pleasant.

He opened the window and stepped out, letting his magic carry him through the air. It felt much less exhilarating without his wings, but he’d have to make do. He wanted to clean up at least some of this mess before Lance woke up.

~

When he came back in through the window, Lance’s bed was empty and the whole apartment smelled of bacon and chocolate. Keith tried to brush as much of the dust and leaves as he could off of his clothes before he went out to the kitchen.

Lance was standing in the kitchen, humming to himself as he flipped pancakes, then put on more bacon. It was definitely something he’d done before.

“Good morning,” Keith announced, leaning against the bedroom door.

Lance jumped a little bit at his voice, turning to look over his shoulder. “Oh, hey, good morning. You were gone when I woke up, so I thought…” He stopped, then quickly turned away. “I decided to make breakfast. I hope you like pancakes. They’re not as good as Hunk’s cooking, but, hey, we can’t all be culinary superheroes.”

 _So I thought what?_ Keith wondered to himself. What had been going through Lance’s brain when he’d woken up and seen Keith gone? Relief, probably. Maybe he shouldn’t have come back.

But Lance didn’t look all that _upset_ at seeing him, either, so… it was probably okay? And Keith wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep himself away even if he wanted to at this point, because Lance looked comfortable and graceful as he practically danced through the kitchen to the tune of whatever song he was humming. Altogether as lovely for Keith to watch as ever, especially considering that the blue tank top Lance had thrown on did absolutely nothing to hide his archer’s physique.

“Here, you can have the first piece of bacon, Demon Prince,” Lance offered. “The other guys won’t wake up until like two in the afternoon, I guarantee it. They’re always bums when it gets to vacation time.”

“And you’re not?” Keith teased, taking the bacon from him.

“Oh shut up. You’ve only been here like two days. You don’t know my life.”

“I think it’s three, now.”

“Oh, whatever! Shut up and eat your bacon!”

Lance huffed, focusing on the food. “Anyway, I choked at Nationals last time and didn’t even get a bronze, so I can’t do that this time. I have to keep practicing as much as I can.”

Keith paused mid-bite. “Choked?”

“Yeah. I heard my cousin was getting deported and I freaked out. Even though I _know_ I’m here under a student visa fair and square… I kept wondering what might happen if the school decides I’m too much of a PR risk. And when you’re worried, it just all starts to go wrong. I mean, it wasn’t like it was the first time I’d been under pressure, but I- I just…”

He swallowed the words, and Keith set a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, I think I get it.”

“Why? Has that happened to you?”

“No,” Keith admitted. “Not really.”

“Ah, I forgot,” Lance answered, focusing on the pancakes and shrugging Keith’s hand off. “You’re perfect. Why would you have ever choked?”

Keith frowned at him. “Perfect? You know I’m a _demon,_ right?”

“Uh… yeah,” he squeaked, his ears turning red again. “I remembered that. Now go sit down, _demon_ , so I can bring you your pancakes. Chocolate chip, the way they’re supposed to…”

He turned, then seemed to forget what he was saying when he saw the way Keith was looking at him. He really needed to stop doing that. He was being far too obvious. He needed to think of some way to make himself stop feeling these things.

“Whatchya looking at?” Lance asked, raising one eyebrow.

“You have flour on your nose, dummy,” Keith snorted, reaching up to rest his hand on the side of Lance’s face, electricity jolting his fingertips, his thumb brushing the white powder off of Lance’s skin.

And Lance tensed under his touch, his eyes growing wide, reminding Keith of the first moment he’d saw him, eyes like tropical sea water under bright sunlight. Filled with so much warmth and color and energy, and even danger.

And then before he knew it, Keith was guiding Lance’s chin toward him, barely any force needed at all, and he was going to make it _this time_ , for sure. Because maybe if he just satisfied his craving, just _once_ , it would finally go away.

“AH! My pancake’s burning!” Lance suddenly announced, jerking out of Keith’s touch and leaving him to watch sourly as he flipped over the blackened sweet, the moment, once again, completely spoiled.

Keith had smelled it, of course, long before Lance had, but he’d ignored it. It hadn’t been important.

One of these times, he was going to get his chance. Eventually.

~

While Lance was practicing his archery, Keith decided to focus on the demons again, knocking a large imp off of the roof of the school building with a bolt of lightning. It screamed and dissolved into dust, but there were plenty to fill its place, from mist monsters to little mudkips that blended in with the grass and tangled their long, spindly fingers into the plant life, tripping anyone who encountered them.

Still, working on the demons was almost a relief to Keith, compared to his frustration at both his own lack of self-control, and that the times he’d lost control hadn’t even reaped any _reward_. By comparison, as long as he was getting rid of the demons while they were alone, Keith was fine, since it took about as much effort as squashing insects. But there were a few times that they attacked him together that it got a little bit stickier. A pair of mudkips sticking his feet to the ground, imps attacking from the sky, and several other ankle-biters jabbing at him. He’d managed to get rid of them all, but he knew there would be more. There were always more.

Humans didn’t realize it, but even without summoning circles, they were summoning demons _literally all the time_. Any time they jokingly used a ouija board and asked the spirits for guidance, a demon would appear. Any time someone wished evil on anyone else, a demon appeared. Most of them were too small to do any _real_ damage, but… there were some caveats they could exploit, and were all too eager to do so.

When he came back to the apartment, Keith kept himself glamoured just in case, sliding open the window to see Lance sprawled out on his bed, his head resting on his hand as he doodled in his notebook, his eyelids drooping.

From the looks of it, the notebook was supposed to be for one of Lance’s “Winter interim classes”, which he’d explained during breakfast he had to take because his grades in high school weren’t so good. But it looked like Lance had ended up spending more time doodling than doing his homework, because there were a series of drawings across the page that looked like… Keith.

Well, kind of. Actually, they were pretty awful. His chin was too pointy, the eyes were at different heights, and the wings were crooked, so the only reason he could identify himself was the way Lance had scribbled through the wings and hair to make them dark, and drawn little spirals on top of his head to represent where his horns should be.

Keith couldn’t help but laugh, which made Lance jump and look around frantically, slamming the notebook shut so hard it bounced off the bed.

“W-where are you?!”

Keith removed his glamour, still laughing. “It doesn’t look anything like the real thing.”

Lance blushed, first a light pink, but quickly deepening to a dark crimson all the way through his face. “Just so you know, I wasn’t drawing you for any special reason. I was just bored!”

“It looks horrible!” Keith laughed again, using a bit of magic to flip open the notebook. “I mean… I look like a wax sculpture on a hot day.”

Lance pouted, snatching the drawing off of the floor and clutching it to his chest. “So I’m not an artist, okay? It’s just a doodle.”

 _It’s horrible,_ Keith thought, _But I love it and I love you and I want to kiss your whole stupid face right now._

“There was this one girl I went to school with,” Lance continued, interrupting the moment _again_ , setting his notebook on his bed and kicking his legs out in front of himself, like a little kid. “And _man_ , could she draw! We always thought she’d be this big name artist, and when she got into this really great art school, we were all excited, right? But then, she ended up dropping out, saying that art school just destroyed all of her love of art.” He frowned, looking down at the back cover of his notebook. “I was kinda scared when I heard that, too. What if I stopped even _liking_ archery? Where would I be without it?”

“Lance…”

Then suddenly, he brightened, jumping up. “Hey, I think some of her drawings are in the yearbook! I’ll show you!”

 

~Lance~

He knew he was babbling, on and on about his classmates in high school, this one who used to bully him, this one who led the cheer squad and was actually the nicest person ever, and then her successor who was absolutely not a nice person, and the one time he decided to try doing theater, but ended up getting a background part because he couldn’t dedicate enough time to rehearsals thanks to archery practice. Babbling about how his mom showed up with a huge bouquet of flowers and gave him a big hug. Babbling about trying out all of the different sports for a while, not really liking most of them except archery… babbling about this girl he’d had a crush on when he was a freshman, who he invited to a competition...

“At first I thought, you know, archers are the _cool_ , quiet type, which girls dig, so I thought seeing me in action might get her attention.”

“Did it work?” Keith asked, leaning forward over the living room coffee table and flipping through the pages of the yearbook.

“Nah. She started dating the captain of the soccer team. But I still liked archery, so it was okay. And once I started doing really, really good, my parents figured it was the best way for me to get into college. Since it wasn’t like they could pay for it on their own, and they were already paying for my older sis.”

“Older brother, older sister… how many siblings do you _have_?” Keith asked, leaning back.

“Uhhh four? I’m the youngest, though.” He paused, considering Keith’s expression. “What about you?”

“Me? What about me?”

“Do you have any siblings, Demon Prince? First in line for the throne, or are you second-best?”

Keith snorted. “Well I guess you could say I’m first _in line_ , but I’m not the oldest brother. My older brother’s the King.”

Lance snapped upright. “What?!”

“Yeah… it was my father’s idea that I marry Allura, though. Since Shiro was gonna be the King, he’d be too important to send off as a peace offering to the angels. I’m more disposable.”

Lance felt the color drain from his face. He couldn’t ever imagine Keith thinking of himself as _disposable_. Keith, who had never been anything but beautiful and powerful and perfect at everything, ever since he’d arrived. There was no one like him. How could he be _disposable?!_

But, of course, he didn’t actually say any of that. Instead what he said was, “I guess that’s how it is when you’re the younger one, huh?”

Keith smiled faintly at this, glancing at him and shrugging. “I guess it is.” He shook his head. “Sorry, you were talking about your college. I didn’t mean to make things serious.”

Lance set down the yearbook he was holding and turned towards Keith, shifting so that they were facing each other on the couch. “Hey, I know I’m not an expert on all of this demon-angel stuff, but… I want to know more about you. I know you’re a demon, and I know you’re stuck here because I can’t make a wish, but… I’m not gonna try and exorcise you just because you’re honest with me, y’know?”

Keith looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers, and their long, pointed black claws. “Maybe you _should_ get me exorcised. Your mother’s done it before, right?”

Lance jolted backwards, staring at him incredulously. “You were actually listening to that part?!”

Keith tilted his head sideways. “Why wouldn’t I be? I was listening to the whole thing. About when you met Pidge and Hunk at a video game event Freshman year and Pidge destroyed everyone, and you were scared of her so wanted to get on her good side… about your first crush in fifth grade, your sister’s baby, your sister getting into a good college, your dad’s guitar, your mother’s Bible…” He paused. “What made you think I wasn’t listening?”

Lance had kind of gotten used to people tuning him out when he started to babble. He never hated them for it-- even Pidge and Hunk did it from time to time, because they needed to focus on their own things. He just couldn’t seem to shut off his mouth sometimes, no matter how hard he’d try. He’d get just a little bit too comfortable with someone, and there he’d go, blurting his life story. He’d kind of stopped expecting anyone to pay attention.

“Can I… see your hands?” Keith asked, suddenly.

“Huh? Why? Are you gonna take them off?” Lance asked, tucking his hands tightly next to his body.

Keith rolled his eyes. “If I wanted to do that, I would have done it already. I just want to look at them.”

Grudgingly, Lance stretched out his hands, palm down, watching Keith with extreme suspicion. But when Keith began to run his fingers over the backs of his hands, then flipping his hands over and tracing the lines of the calluses on his palms with the very tip of his thumbs, Lance felt a tingle go through his spine.

“You said that you used to practice shooting until your hands bled. I wasn’t sure I believed you, but… I can tell. In the demon world-- and the angel world, too-- everyone heals way too fast to even get scars, let alone calluses like this. Greater demons, at least. Lesser demons aren’t much to look at from the beginning.”

He continued running his fingers over Lance’s palms, strangely focused on them. To be honest, the calluses were a sign of his childish stupidity. You were _supposed_ to wear a glove when you practiced archery, for the specific purpose of protecting your hands, but he’d been too excited at just having the bow.

He didn’t think his hands were particularly nice-looking, even when he _did_ let his niece paint his nails. His fingers were thin and gnarly, and longer on one hand than the other. He actually didn’t usually like showing them off, usually keeping them shoved in his pockets, but… for some reason, he was showing Keith.

“I guess this is what happens to humans when they love something, huh?” Keith murmured, closing his eyes. “It carves its way into your bodies and leaves its mark on your skin, your bones… Do people love each other like that, too? Your sister, mother, nieces, nephews, friends… if I knew them, would I be able to look at you and see their mark and think, ‘yes, this boy feels a lot of love?’”

Lance wasn’t sure if Keith knew that sometimes, he could say things so… beautifully, so perfectly, like a poet, but… completely on accident. He wasn’t trying to sound poetic, he just… meant what he said. Every time. He never babbled, like Lance, just said what he meant to say and then would go silent, waiting for Lance to fill the space for him. Just like the previous night, when he’d made room for him on the bed but had never made him come in, just waited for him to fill the space.

He loved that.

“I think so, yeah. Everyone’s shaped by the people they love. I don’t think I’d be me without all of those people. So I guess when you get to know me, you’re kind of getting to know all the people I love, too,” Lance explained, laughing nervously, but still making no attempt to remove his hands from Keith’s grasp.

“Maybe I am, too. I don’t know. I’ve never been able to see it. And… I don’t really know that many people I’ve ever loved. I don’t… let that many people in.”

His voice was getting so quiet that Lance had to lean closer just to hear him.

“You don’t choose the people you love, Keith. You just… love them,” Lance advised. He really felt it this time, more than ever. “Even if it seems like the stupidest decision you’ve ever made, and probably going to turn out bad… you love them anyway.”

Keith looked up, and Lance met his eyes for a second, suddenly realizing that he was just a bit _too_ close, so close that he could see himself reflected in Keith’s pupils. So close that if he wanted, he could lean forward just a tiny bit and he’d be kissing him. If he wanted. He wanted. He always wanted.

The door to the apartment swung open.

Lance jerked back, pulling his hands out of Keith’s grip, feeling his face heat up to like a million degrees. “Uh, hey, Charlie, what’s up?”

“I went to get groceries instead of drinking with Danny and Nick.” He grinned, lifting up his purchases. “Chocolate milk and mac and cheese. Kitchen essentials.”

“I think you’ll die if that’s all you eat,” Keith piped up, his voice sounding kind of weird to Lance.

“Oh, hey, Keith. You here again?”

“Sorry. I can leave, if you want.”

“Nah, nah, it’s cool. Just, uh… make sure you make some friends here at school too, okay?”

Keith tilted his head to the side again, and Lance dropped his head into his hands. _Oh man,_ he thought to himself, screaming inside at the same time. _He knows. Charlie knows. He’s not even wrong. What am I going to do?!_

 

~Keith~

Keith wasn’t really able to sleep that night, thanks to the way his emotions were spinning around like crazy, which also wasn’t helping with the problem of minor demons. Of course, all demons are weakened by sunlight, including Keith, but for the rest of them, it kept them indoors, where for him even a 50% reduction in power during the day left him fairly functional. Still, demons are attracted by any powerful emotions, and right then, Keith was feeling all of them.

He sat in a tree on campus, tossing a large hunting knife from hand to hand, watching its blade glint in the moonlight with every toss. He’d acquired it just that day, initially planning on stealing it, but then Lance had insisted on paying for it, which only made him feel worse, because it was just _another_ thing Lance had bought him. Knowing that Lance’s family wasn’t rich and his dedication to archery and school kept him from holding down a part-time job… it had made him sufficiently guilty.

Ever since that moment on the couch, when Charlie had come in, he was pretty sure Lance had been avoiding him. Deliberately facing away from him, avoiding looking at him, staying up late playing video games with Charlie instead of going to bed.

Of course, Lance was free to want some time away from Keith, and to spend time with his friends, it was just that the shift had been so sudden, and the timing so confusing. He’d been sure, for a moment there, Lance was going to kiss him, and he was going to let him. But then suddenly Lance didn’t want to even look at him. Had he done something wrong?

He leaned back on the branch, thrusting downwards with the knife as he did so, turning an attacking gremlin into a cloud of dust. Of course, he _had_ almost kissed Lance… four times now? But none of them had been successful, so did that count as forcing himself on him? Maybe he really should give Lance some space for a while. He’d already reduced Lance’s options just by being the one to come through the portal in the first place. Although chances were that if he hadn’t, Lance would be dead right then…

But he didn’t want to think about that. He’d just… keep himself away from Lance for a while, for both of their own good. He couldn’t go far, not until Lance made his wish, but… he was fine with waiting. He’d wait all night, taking out every single minor demon who came too close to the apartment, because he knew they’d be able to figure out that Lance was his weakness right now. A weakness they were sure to exploit, if he gave them the chance. Because that was the dangerous thing about demons, both greater and lesser… they may be powerful or not, but either way, they’re clever.

And as long as he was outside, for once, Lance would have the chance to sleep in his own bed. Who was Keith to intrude on that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter that got a little long... mainly because I couldn't help myself, and stuck some extra-cliche tropes in here lol. Hope you don't mind. ;)


	6. Invisible Target

“Keith, I’m ready to make my wish.”

The words dug into Keith’s stomach in the midst of a battle, knocking the breath out of him and almost allowing the kelpie to trample him. He gulped, finished the monster off, then teleported, summoned by the words.

“You are?” he asked, popping into view in front of Lance. He felt exhausted again, after fighting almost non-stop all night, but he was definitely not going to tell Lance that.

Lance’s eyes widened, and he stepped back. “Woah, that actually worked?”

“I’m very sensitive to your desires,” Keith answered, meaning it in multiple different ways. “So… what’s your wish?”

Lance shrugged, a grin tugging at the corners of his face. “Nothing. I don’t actually know what to wish for; I just wanted to see if you’d show up. My version of like-a-good-neighbor-Statefarm-is-there!”

Keith glared at him. “Lance, teleporting uses a lot of power. Don’t waste my time like this.”

“Okay okay okay, sorry! I just… was wondering where you were.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Why? Were you worried?”

“Of course I was worried! You keep disappearing without telling me where you’re going or what you’re doing!”

“I thought you didn’t want to keep me as a prisoner.”

“I don’t,” Lance snapped back immediately, staring at him as if horrified that he’d interpret it that way. “You don’t have to stay by me all the time, I just… want to know that you’re okay. I keep looking over my shoulder to say something to you, and you’re not there. It’s weird. So can you at least tell me when you’re gonna vanish?”

Keith sighed, pushing the bubbling emotions down again. “Fine, I’ll tell you, from now on. Is that good enough?”

“No. I want you to kiss me.”

Keith blinked. “Uh… what?”

Lance laughed. “That was a joke, dude. You should have seen your face! You look like I punched you in the stomach.”

Keith _felt_ like he’d punched him in the stomach. “Please don’t joke about things like that.”

“Sorry, sorry, just couldn’t help myself. Anyway, now that you’re here, I thought of something.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Well… when you first came into this world, you had wings, right? Do you use them to fly?”

“Duh. What else are wings for?”

“I thought maybe they were just for aesthetic,” Lance suggested, shrugging. “So you can fly, right? Can you still fly without them? I see you float sometimes, but never that high.”

“Yeah, I can still fly,” Keith answered. “Do you want me to show you?”

“Uhhh…”

But Keith was already moving, taking Lance by the shoulders and scooping him up off the ground. “Consider it a punishment for summoning me out of nowhere.”

“What?! WHAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Lance clung tightly to him as he took off of the ground, soaring fast up into the sky. He kept his eyes squeezed shut against the wind Keith made as he soared upwards.

“Woah, woah, woah, woah! Do NOT drop me, do you hear me?!” Lance screamed, clinging even tighter.

“I won’t,” Keith answered, slowing down as they reached the very bottom of the clouds. “You can open your eyes, now.”

Lance peeked one eye open, then the other, beginning to relax a little in Keith’s grip. “Woah! We got up here in seconds!”

Keith smiled, pleased with himself. “You see the school down there?”

Lance laughed, letting go of Keith with one hand and using it to reach out and run his hands through the wisps of cloud. “I can see my house from here!”

“It’s better when I have my wings,” Keith complained, frowning. “It’s more… exhilarating. More natural.”

“I’m sorry… that you lost them. But you can get them back, right?”

Keith nodded, beginning to soar through the sky again, occasionally sneaking a glance at Lance’s delighted face as the world spread out below them. “Once I go back to the demon world, I’ll get all of my powers back.”

“But you can’t go back until I make my wish, right?”

“...that’s right.”

“I’m sorry. You probably hate me for that, don’t you?”

Keith froze, looking down at Lance, his throat clogged. It took some effort before he could finally choke out, “I can’t hate you, Lance.”

“Oh… that’s good.” Then he looked down at the ground again, breathing in the thin air. “It really is pretty, huh? The view all the way up here. It feels like there are so many possibilities, like… if I wanted, I can do anything. But I guess it’s only because I have you here, huh? When you’re gone, I’m back to being boring old me.”

“Lance…”

“Woah, look out, there’s an airplane!” Lance shouted, and Keith hurried to duck out of the way of the descending aircraft, dropping both of them into a sudden dive that drew an exhilarated scream out of Lance’s lungs.

When they righted again, Lance was laughing, his head tilted back and his voice echoing all around the perfect sky. His left hand was gripping Keith’s jacket so tightly his knuckles were white, but when he opened his eyes, Keith could see they were filled with excitement, wonder, energy, like always.

It made Keith want to kiss him.

_No. Not this time. I’m not going to try it. I’m not going to let myself lose control again…_

Suddenly, something struck him against the side of the head.

Keith jumped, surprised, and a little dizzy. They were beginning to descend, against his will. Lance was staring at him in panic.

What was he going to do?! At this height, the fall would be deadly. Not for him, since he’d heal quickly, but… Lance was just human. He couldn’t let him fall. He absolutely could not let him fall!

He looked up, noticing a cloud of demons that hadn’t been there before. Imps, gremlins, Will o’ wisps, shadowcrawlers... Had he been too distracted to notice?

He shook his head, pouring all of his concentration into slowing down their descent, managing a full swoop upwards before landing gently on the ground.

“Are you alright?!” he shouted, setting Lance down.

“Me, what about you?! A rock came flying out of nowhere and hit you on the back of the head!”

Keith blinked. “Nowhere? You mean you didn’t see the thing that…” He stopped. Of course Lance couldn’t see them. _They were all glamoured_. “Lance, I need you to get out of here.”

“What? Why? What about your injury? What happened? Did something attack you?” he asked, rapidfire, his eyes scanning through the sky for something Keith knew he couldn’t see.

“Malthias’ announcement of my identity must have brought every demon in the human world for miles to come find me. They weren’t working together until now, so…”

“SERIOUSLY?! Then hell, make it so I can see them!”

“Lance, please. You asked me to tell you if I’m going to disappear, and I’m telling you right now. Just go. Hurry!”

Lance glared down at him stubbornly, and Keith wondered what he could do to get him out of there, make him safe, something, anything…

“Fine. But I’m coming back with help.”

“What?!”

But Lance had already turned and begun to run away, his phone pressed against his ear. Whatever he was planning to do, Keith didn’t really have time to try figuring out, because he had to dedicate his attention to the swarm of demons around him.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he growled to them, hooking his hands into claws and wrapping himself in fire.

“Consume… consume… consume! Pretty little princeling!” an ugly red imp to his right jeered. “If we consume you, will we be pretty, too?”

Keith blasted it with a jet of fire, but another one took its place almost immediately. “Heeheeheeheeheehee… they say that the prince may even be more powerful than the King! So if we eat you… yes, if we eat you, we can rule Hell ourselves!”

Keith grit his teeth, tensing his muscles for the battle. “Not a chance.”

 

~Pidge~

Coincidentally, Pidge was in the process of telling Hunk everything that had happened when she got Lance’s phone call.

“And you’re just gonna _trust_ this guy?!” Hunk exclaimed, giving Matt #2 the side-eye.

“Well, not really _trust_ trust. How stupid do you think I am?” Pidge remarked, snatching another cookie from the tray in the middle of the table and ignoring the sound of her phone buzzing.

“Pidge is a genius! I can’t believe humans have figured out a way to do large-scale plasma manipulation without magic!”

“Well… Hunk actually built the machine. I just programmed it.” But whatever she said, Pidge still felt pretty pleased with herself.

“Woah… he really did sound like Matt just then…” Hunk muttered, getting uncomfortably close to Matt #2’s face as he examined him. “And they _look_ exactly the same, until he turns all green and his eyes get creepy.” Her phone buzzed again. “Hey, Pidge, are you gonna pick that up?”

She sighed, snatching her phone off of the coffee table. “Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to finish what I was saying.” She hit the answer button, plopping down in the armchair again as she called out, “Hello, you’ve reached Holt, Holt, and Garrett divorce lawyers and marriage counselors, may I ask who’s calling?” She knew it was Lance, but she felt like messing with him.

“PIDGE! Is your brother still a demon?!”

She was a bit surprised at the urgency in Lance’s voice, but just glanced at Matt #2 and shrugged. “If I didn’t know what you were talking about, I’d be _really_ confused right now,” she teased. “And maybe even a little insulted. But to answer your question, yes, he’s still here. I think he just got better.”

“Tell him to come find me _right now!”_ He sounded out of breath, and she could hear footsteps echoing around the phone, actually a little bit too much sound going on all at once for her to be comfortable with.

She must have looked pretty confused, because now both Hunk and Matt#2 were watching her with concern on their faces.

“Why? Lance, what’s going on?”

“Keith is getting attacked by something, a bunch of demons, I think. But I can’t see them, and he told me to run. But he looked really worried, and I--” There was a sudden thud, loud enough to make Pidge hold the phone away from her ear. And then Lance was back, huffing. “Sorry, the phone slipped out of my hands while I was running.”

“Wait, who’s Keith?!” Pidge asked, getting to her feet, the other two following suit as if they could sense what was going on.

“My demon! Th-the one who beat up your brother!”

“And you want him to help you? I thought the fact that they got into a huge, destructive fight was a good reason to believe that they weren’t exactly friends?”

“Listen, Pidge. Tell Matt, or Malthias, or whatever his name is, that this is _his fault_. I don’t care if he’s a demon or not, he helped make the mess, so now he’s got to help clean it up.”

Pidge frowned, meeting Matt’s gaze and silently asking him if he understood. Slowly, he nodded.

It seemed as if there was no getting out of this. Of course, she would have gone to help Lance anyway, but she still didn’t exactly look forward to battling demons of any kind, regardless of whether or not she had one on her side. If, that is, that’s actually where he was.

 

~Keith~

Keith had never really deeply considered just how much magic he used until he suddenly didn’t have enough of it. For all of his long, long life, it had been a never-ending resource, flooding out whenever he needed it, for as much as he needed. But now, suddenly, his power was already cut in half, thanks to coming through the portal, and he’d exhausted even more of it throughout the day, especially considering he’d never really fully recovered from his battle with Malthias, thanks to already fighting off demons whenever being with Lance got to be too much for him.

Altogether, Keith was not having a very great time. He had to keep the fires around himself blazing constantly, or else the imps would get close enough to jab him in the back, or grab his legs and arms, preventing him from moving while the others attacked. And that’s not including the damage done by the demons from far off, the magic of ice and snow to counter his blaze, made stronger by the winter season.

“I am _not_ going to be _eaten!”_ He shouted, striking down another line of gremlins. What made it worse was that while he was trying not to do damage to any of the humans or human structures around him, the lesser demons didn’t seem to have any of the same concerns. The city lights flickered in and out, the frozen grass turning black and muddy, large potholes opening up in the roads.

He tried pushing them towards the lake, where, at least, if any of them did damage, it would hit the water and not any unsuspecting humans. It was difficult, though, since there were so many that it was difficult for him to see the ground below.

“I’m here, Your Highness!”

Blasts of blue lightning went through the crowd of demons, bright enough that even Keith had to blink.

“Malthias!”

“Please, call me Matt.”

The King’s senior advisor, despite his insistence on the nickname, had dropped his human disguise, his yellow eyes glinting with intelligence as he sized up the enemies.

“Well, Matt, I appreciate it, but aren’t you more powerful at nighttime?!” Keith shouted, striking down an attacking shadow-monster with his hunting knife.

“That may be true, but I can’t leave you to deal with this by yourself,” Matt shot back. “After all, Lance was right-- it’s my fault. I should have been more subtle.”

“Lance?” Keith paused, parrying an attack by a large shadow demon. In that moment, he glanced below and saw the girl from before-- Pidge-- watching them with interest, and joined by a large boy with brown hair and skin that Keith hadn’t seen before. But he fairly well fit Lance’s description of his friend, Hunk.

“Why did you bring humans with you?!”

“I couldn’t help it!” Matt insisted, turning so that he stood at Keith’s back. “Once Pidge figured out that Lance might be in trouble, she insisted on coming herself! Arguing with her was taking too much time!”

Keith’s head was starting to spin from a combination of confusion and exhaustion. He had a nasty scrape on his forehead from a lucky hit by a gremlin that was starting to bleed into his eye, making it difficult to see. If this went on much longer, he might actually lose.

“But… where’s Lance?”

“I don’t know! He just called and asked me… to…”

Suddenly Matt dropped out of the sky, his eyes closed in unconsciousness.

“MATT?!”

Keith, for a moment, disregarded his own safety, blasting the demons who were all too eager to take Matt as a consolation prize instead of Keith.

He swooped down and grabbed him, depositing him on the ground in front of Hunk and Pidge, putting up a magical barrier around the trio.

“He was worried, when we got the call, that he might be too late,” Pidge explained quickly, glancing all around her, as if she could tell the demons were there even without seeing them. “He has a watch that counts down how much time he has left in the human world before his powers are cut, just like yours were… and he was afraid that he was running out of time. I think he was right.”

Keith cursed, wishing he could just tell Pidge and Hunk to run, but he knew that if they did, the demons would just go after them. They were safest here, under Keith’s barrier. But that would only hold up for as long as he was conscious. He could just abandon them and let the demons kill them, but… they were Lance’s friends. How could he possibly do that?

“Whatever you do, don’t move from that spot!” he demanded, wiping the blood from his forehead and returning to the fight. He knew that if he didn’t keep the demons occupied, they’d grow hungry for blood and start attacking everything nearby, especially anything he cared about. They’d start hunting for Lance. Maybe they already were.

 

~Lance~

Lance had first shot a bow when he was five years old.

His older brother had taken him bird hunting, and had let him use his bow. At first, he was terrible at it-- he was fairly sure he’d missed almost every single time. But he’d gotten kind of mad that he couldn’t control the bow, that the arrow would go places he didn’t want it to, that the string was hard to pull and the wood was rough on his hands. He’d gotten frustrated by his brother’s gentle ribbing, angry at himself for being made a fool out of.

So he’d taught himself to shoot. When you have a family as big as his, actually bringing in some game every once in a while isn’t that bad. So while Nick, Charlie, and Danny had learned archery with the same old bulls-eye targets, Lance was used to more difficult things.

Which would definitely be put to the test here.

He burst into his apartment, not even bothering to kick off his shoes like he normally did, running past Charlie’s door and ignoring the sounds he heard coming from inside. He focused only on what he was there to do, to grab his jacket and his bow case, and maybe some extra arrows…

“Dude, what’s the rush?” Danny asked with a yawn, opening the cupboard under the sink and pulling out a bottle of whiskey. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Actually, I _haven’t_ seen it, and that’s the problem,” Lance answered, absentmindedly, as he shoved extra arrows into his quiver before slinging it back over his shoulder.

“Uh… okay?” Danny stared at him for a moment. “You showing off for someone?”

“No.”

“Good. I think I’ve had enough of that for today. You gotta admit, Charlie’s got game.”

“I don’t have to admit anything. Anyway, I’ll be back soon, okay? See ya!” And then Lance took off out the door, leaving Danny to frown and watch him go.

“Geez, I haven’t seen him that freaked out since he almost slept through his psych final…”

 

~Keith~

He did have to give Matt his thanks, when the other greater demon regained consciousness: he _had_ helped Keith greatly reduce the numbers of attacking demons.

But what confused Keith most was that, throughout all of this, he’d never seen any indicator of any kind of leader. But there _had_ to be one. It’s true, that knowing he was in the human world with only half of his power meant that demons would start to converge on him, but demons weren’t historically very good at working _together_ without any form of hierarchy. But the whole time, he’d never seen any demon more powerful than a shadow demon, and even they appeared to be bottom-level.

It was starting to be difficult to keep his eyes open, and his hunting knife felt like it weighed two tons, but still he kept fighting. He was almost there, almost done…

His knife glanced off the skin of something hard and coarse, surprising Keith. He looked up, and stared directly into eyes and a face of stone.

“A gargoyle!” he grunted, jerking backwards. He was sure he hadn’t seen any before, but yet here one was, which probably meant that… “you’re the ringleader, huh?”

“What, you don’t remember me, boy?” the gargoyle sneered, its mouth full of needle-like teeth. “I was there when you were born!” It laughed, attacking gleefully. “Lucky lucky prince, with all of that power!”

Keith grit his teeth, trying to blast the gargoyle with fire. He wasn’t surprised when it didn’t work, thanks to the magically stone-hard skin, but it was still irritating. Gargoyles, unlike the rest of the demons he’d fought so far, were middle-level demons, and were known for their love of irony-- most of them were actually summoned by religious leaders of one kind or another. Of course, they were decent enough with magic, but what made them really annoying was their tendency to turn their skin to rock whenever they were being attacked, making them incredibly difficult to kill.

“If you’re tough enough to get all of those demons to work for you, then what do you need my power for?” Keith asked, cutting down another wave of imps.

“Oh, to return _home_ , my boy!”

“Home?”

“You know as well as I do that we don’t belong in the human world. We’re nothing but parasites, and treated just the same. For centuries I’ve been trapped here, never strong enough to open a portal on my own… and yet here you are. With your power I could come and go as I please.”

It jumped at him, and Keith seized his chance, plunging his blade into its heart as it attacked, its claws still outstretched.

In its brief moment of surprise before it turned to dust, Keith remarked, “The trick to gargoyles is that they can’t have skin of stone when they attack you.”

Finally, it disappeared, and Keith felt himself fading quickly with relief. The ground was coming up to meet him. And then…

“The trick with demon princes is that they trust their feelings more than their heads.”

There was a second gargoyle. Of course there was a second one. Why hadn’t he considered that? Gargoyles always group together. But it was too late, all of his energy was gone.

 _I can’t believe I’m going to die at the hands of scum like this_ , he thought.

At least until an arrow sliced its way through the gargoyle’s eye socket.

It was Lance. Of course it was Lance. Poised perfectly with one foot slightly behind him, his back arched, his bow outstretched, the bowstring still vibrating with the power behind the shot. He looked confident, and focused, and determined, and…

Wait. Lance _couldn’t even see the Gargoyle._

“I gotcha, buddy!” he shouted, giving Keith a small grin.

The second gargoyle exploded into dust, and Keith landed on the ground in a painful, bloody heap. The battle was over. It was really, finally over.

Lance dropped his bow and ran over to him, joined quickly by Pidge and Hunk, who stood over him as he crouched down to examine Keith’s wounds. “Jesus, you look like shit.”

“I love you so much right now,” Keith breathed, completely unable to fight it anymore. He was too tired to fight it anymore.

“What?!” Lance jolted a little, as if Keith had shocked him, before his expression grew stern. “Look, if this is revenge for that prank earlier today, I just want you to know that this is a super bad ti-”

He never got to finish that sentence, because Keith kissed him. Right there, in front of Pidge and Hunk, surrounded by the dust and blood of hundreds of lesser demons, he kissed that boy like his life depended on it, breathing him in, knotting his hands in the fabric of his hoodie, trying to communicate everything he’d felt over the past few days into that kiss.

And all the while, he waited for Lance to push him away, to say that this was wrong, that he was being evil, he couldn’t do this.

He didn’t. Lance melted into him instantly, his hands finding his way into his hair, groaning a little in the back of his throat, his eyes closing and his heartbeat so strong that Keith could feel it pulsing under his skin.

“Uh… maybe we should take Matt and go…” Hunk suggested to Pidge, looking extremely uncomfortable with the whole situation.

“Yeah. I think they’re gonna be here for a while,” she replied, sounding mildly disgusted. “You think you can carry him by yourself?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Alley-oop!”

Pidge was right. Right then, Keith felt like he could waste away an eternity doing nothing but kissing Lance.


	7. The Past

~Hunk~

The next few days were surprisingly peaceful, Hunk was pretty sure. Not that he _really_ knew, since he’d been back home with his family for winter break during much of the action, but… aside from the fact that their current project involved the help of a demon… it seemed pretty chill to him.

“Wow, Pidge, this is amazing!” Matt #2 was saying, a big goofy smile on his face. “WIth some small changes, this plan might actually work!”

“Yeah, there is the small problem of it needing heavy metals to operate, though,” Hunk commented, peeking over Matt’s shoulder. “I don’t think the school is going to provide us with a small sample of plutonium for ‘personal research.’” Probably also because their project was being built in the Holt family’s garage.

“Hmmm… I might be able to help with that…” Matt hummed pensively, tapping a finger against his lips and staring thoughtfully down at the extensive list of mathematical equations Pidge had set up.

“You’re not… gonna do anything illegal, right?” Hunk asked, afraid of what the answer would be.

“Well…” Matt began, considering him. Hunk waited patiently for him to finish, the long silence not exactly encouraging. “Human laws don’t apply to me,” he finally answered, with a grin. Hunk was still kind of suspicious of Matt #2, partially just because of his appearance, he hated to admit. Although apparently, along with his powers, most of Matt #2’s demonic looks, including his green skin, had faded, his eyes were the same unnerving bright yellow that looked as if they were staring straight into your soul. He could glamour them, of course, but as long as it was just the three of them… he usually didn’t bother.

“Hey, if you’re gonna borrow my brother’s face, you’re gonna follow human laws,” Pidge snapped, giving him a solid whack on the shoulder.

“Alright, alright! I’m not gonna steal anything. But plutonium is mined, just like any other resource, right? All I have to do is take it right from the source. Sneaking into a plutonium mine and taking just a gram of the stuff would be a piece of cake. And besides,” he grinned again, “what the government doesn’t know won’t hurt them.”

Hunk turned back to the mass of machinery he had in front of him and continued fiddling with it, working to match the schematics he and Pidge had drawn up together as perfectly as possible.

It sure was an odd assortment of tools. Most things were normal, like the wires and screws and pieces of metal, but there were some things Matt had insisted were absolute necessities if they actually wanted their Demon-Revealer to work. A bar of pure, “cold” iron. Some silver jewelry. Branches of rowan wood. A small vial of baby’s tears (which Hunk had a HARD time explaining to his cousin, you can be sure of that). And somehow, if they put all of these things together with some careful wiring, programming, and just a _teeny tiny_ bit of plutonium… they’d be able to see through demonic glamour.

Or uranium. Uranium would work, too.

“Alright,” Pidge announced, turning to Matt. “Just make sure no one sees you. And _be careful_ , okay? I don’t know where the plutonium mines are, but it’s still radioactive, and I don’t know what other monsters are out there waiting for you. You’re vulnerable now that your powers are cut, dummy.”

He shrugged, reaching out and ruffling her hair. “No sweat, Katie. I’ll be back in a sec!”

And with a pop, he vanished, leaving Pidge and Hunk to their work.

“So… you’re getting pretty comfortable with all of this demon stuff, huh? Are you worried you’re gonna get, like… blasted with lightning, or something?”

Pidge considered this, tapping the side of her face with her pencil. “Hmmm… not really? I mean, my family was never really that religious in the first place, so I don’t think God really expects that much of me.” She chuckled. “But I guess, now that we know that demons and angels exist, maybe I shouldn’t doubt God, either.”

Hunk plopped down on the floor, yawning. “But I mean, Pidge, we’ve been at this for two days. Don’t you think it’s time for a break?”

Pidge paused, then plopped down next to him. “You don’t have to help if you don’t want to, Hunk. I’d be okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I just… felt kinda left out that you and Lance were doing cool magic stuff without me, so I want to help you guys. _Someone’s_ gotta keep Lance out of trouble.”

Pidge grinned, leaning her head back against the side of the workbench. “I think, if any of us are doomed to Hell, it’s probably Lance.”

“Yeah, and he’s the one who grew up going to church most often,” Hunk laughed. “But I mean, I guess you don’t always know who you’re gonna have a crush on.”

“Says the guy who’s been pining after the same barista for _three years_ and still hasn’t asked her out.”

“I don’t want to bother her at work!” He squeaked, in the voice of a man who has had this same argument several times. “But even when I see her when she’s not at work, I feel like I don’t need to put that much pressure on her, and…”

“True, I don’t think a spontaneous make-out session really suits you two, either,” Pidge snorted. “But anyway, I’m glad you’re with me on this whole demon thing. I mean, when I first met Matt #2, I knew that something was wrong, and then he got into that fight with Keith, and there was all that magic going on, and… I’ve dedicated my whole life to science, but for a moment, I started to doubt everything I knew. It’s good to have you here to help me figure things out.” She paused, grinning. “AND to help keep Lance under control.”

Hunk laughed, then sighed and stood up again, pondering his equipment. “Hang on… do you have radiation-safe gloves?”

Pidge nodded. “Yeah, my dad has a spare pair around here somewhere. He’s not gonna need them while he’s away for a conference… what?”

Hunk stared at her for a while, then shook his head. “Trust the Holt family to have radiation gloves in their garage, just in case. You guys are nuts!”

“Hunk, you built a potato cannon when you were seven.”

“Yeah, because it was cool! It still works, too.”

Just then, Matt #2 reappeared, grinning wildly and clutching something in a tiny brown cloth. His face was a bit dirty, but his yellow eyes were brighter than ever. “Hey guys, I got it! Had to fight a particularly angry wild boar, though. Did you know that they can see through glamour? Cuz I didn’t.”

Hunk didn’t know what fighting a wild boar entailed, and he didn’t feel like finding out. “Well, hurry up and put it in the steel container-- we don’t want anyone getting radiation poisoning. It’ll actually be safest once we get it in the machine, right Pidge?”

“Yeah, I think so. Based on my calculations, once it’s fitted properly in the machine, the radiation will all get converted perfectly into usable visible light waves that reflect off of demonic glamour and reveal their true forms. Uhhh… we’ll probably test it on you first, Matt, if you don’t mind.”

He shrugged. “Hey, I’m okay with it. Demons aren’t really affected by radiation. Buuut… I do want to make sure you guys are _just_ using it for yourselves, before you start actually making it.”

“Uh… yeah. Why?” Hunk asked.

“Well… I just don’t think humans are fully _ready_ to be reminded of the existence of demons. Most of them have some idea that we’re still here-- otherwise they wouldn’t be quite so scared of the dark-- but they don’t consciously believe it. And… it’s kind of been working for us so far.”

Pidge frowned, walking over to the cabinet and pulling out a pair of thick, rubber, lead-lined gloves. “What do you mean?”

“...You know how I said that Keith has to marry the angel princess, Allura? Well… it’s to protect a pretty… unstable peace. I’m sure you can imagine that angels and demons used to be at war pretty much all the time, and humans always got caught in the middle. Almost of humanity’s worst wars started with Heaven and Hell. But a few centuries ago, they came to an armistice, and don’t kill each other on sight anymore. And… that armistice, that peace, kind of just _happened_ to coincide with the time humans started to not believe in demons so much.”

“...Why?” Hunk asked, and when Pidge gave him a little glare, he just shrugged.

“Well… humans don’t summon demons very often when they don’t think they exist,” Matt answered, handing the plutonium to Pidge. “Angels won’t do anything to demons as long as we stay in Hell, but once we’re over in the human world, things get a little touchy. So bringing demonic summoning back to common knowledge again… probably isn’t a good idea.”

“So…” Hunk started, looking back and forth between the siblings. “We just keep the machine to ourselves, the angels don’t find out, and everyone stays peaceful?”

When Matt didn’t answer right away, he looked nervously between him and Pidge.

“...right?”

 

~Shiro~

Demon King Shiro was worried, as usual.

Malthias’ connection with the demon world had faded two days ago, and yet Shiro had heard nothing from him. He hadn’t expected Keith to come easily, and wasn’t even surprised that Malthias had failed in his mission, but what did worry him was that Malthias had not yet updated him on the situation. It was true that Shiro could scry on them, if he needed to, but he personally preferred to trust Malthias. He’d known the boy since childhood, knew his strengths and weaknesses, his determination, his curiosity, energy, and complete faith in Shiro.

Malthias had never doubted for a moment that Shiro would make a great king, even when Shiro had doubted himself, a thousand, million times. What kind of friend would he be if he did not have the same faith in Malthias?

It was worse, knowing that Malthias’ personal sense of duty meant that, even with his powers cut in half, he would refuse to come home until he’d accomplished his mission, and considering his target was Keith… Shiro couldn’t help but worry.

He shifted his weight on the throne, tempted, still, to check up on his brother himself, just to see what kind of person his brother had found himself bound to. Certainly someone powerful, well-versed in magic, because no other kind of person could possibly keep Keith under control. But that only worried him more. Knowing that his brother was once again being used as a human’s slave made him feel sick to his stomach.

But as King, it was his duty to not let those misgivings on. The demonic nobility could _not_ be allowed to see his fear, his weakness. To them, summoning was a rite of passage, a requirement before becoming a _true_ demon, to cause destruction and death up in the human world. Bonus points if your name becomes the subject of horror stories or legends. Shiro, though, hated summonings. Especially after what he’d seen them do.

He felt like he could finally breathe once the court had adjourned for the night, escaping out to the palace’s veranda, looking out at his enormous kingdom.

The evening air was fresh, calming, smelling like warm sea salt. Below him, the demonic city glittered with fires of many colors, sparkling against the jewels and precious metals from which the city was built. Even the camellia bushes decorating the veranda were crafted of glittering emerald and garnet, catching the firelight and shining against the deep twilight of the demon world, the brightest the sky would ever reach before plunging again into night.

The sound of wings arose from above him, and he looked up to see a cloud of white descending towards him-- white wings, white hair, white-and-blue dress.

Princess Allura.

She alighted gently, smoothing out her dress and perching herself on the veranda railing, her wings gracefully draped over the veranda behind her, tucked tight to her sides. As usual, she looked to Shiro like someone had captured the warmth of the sun and the peace of the moon and poured it all into a single being. She smiled at him, and he felt a muscle in his chin jump.

“You’re worried,” she announced, frowning up at him.

“I’m always worried,” he replied, exhaling and settling himself onto the railing next to her, appearing for all the world like yin and yang, their white and black clashing against each other so spectacularly.

“I know. That’s why I wanted to come see you in private. When you’re not… burdened by responsibility for others.”

He smiled, as usual feeling at peace with her presence. No one else quite understood the pressure on Shiro’s shoulders the way Allura always had. The politics he had to navigate, the family relations he had to memorize, the wars he had to dodge, the conflict he had to mediate… but Allura knew. Allura understood. After all, she was going to become queen someday, herself.

“Allura… I have to wonder, how do you _honestly_ feel about all of this?”

“What do you mean? All of what?”

“Well… Keith running away, to the human world of all places, which you know he once swore he’d never go back to if he could avoid it. But he did it just so he wouldn’t have to marry you, even though you were childhood friends. Are you angry at Keith for that? Rejecting you so completely?”

She thought about this for a while, running her fingers through her hair, selecting a piece of it to begin braiding absentmindedly as she spoke.

“Well, I won’t say it’s particularly complimentary to be rejected in such a manner,” she answered sourly. “But… I wouldn’t say I’m angry. I adore Keith, I always have. But you know, you and I were friends since childhood, too. I feel a bit insulted when you say that Keith and I were friends as if you were not.”

Shiro laughed a bit, flexing the fingers of the prosthetic he’d received as a replacement for the arm he’d lost on the battlefield, against a faction of rebel demons who had opposed the armistice. Allura had given it to him as a present, her frown so deep then, the apology in her eyes more than enough for him to know that she felt guilty about his injury. She had promised, then, that she would heal it for him, if he needed it, but he had refused. He liked his prosthetic. It reminded him that not only was his loss a part of him… but so was Allura.

“Yes, you were my best friend, except maybe Malthias. Always telling us how we’re doing things wrong and yelling when we were going to break things and making us do team-building games because ‘we’re the symbols of the angelic-demonic alliance, so we have to act like it.’” He laughed again. “You practically _made_ us become friends.”

She blushed a little, focusing on the tiny white silk slippers over her feet. “I felt as if I had many expectations to live up to, even when I was young. But… it was necessary. After all… you and I had always dealt with Keith’s wildness, his willfulness… _together_. Especially knowing that I was engaged to him, I felt as if I must rely on you to understand him. I am not about to change that, now.”

Shiro frowned, turning his head to look over his shoulder at the glittering ever-night of the demonic city. “But I don’t know if I know what’s going through his head right now, either.”

Allura sighed, opening her wings a bit and then jumping down from the railing before folding them around her again. The hair she’d just braided, Shiro noticed, was already beginning to come undone, uncoiling itself charmingly around her face.

“I’ve always felt… that Keith is governed too strongly by his emotions. Perhaps, a marriage as loveless as ours would be… frightening enough to him to make him want to run away, anywhere he might be truly away from it all. And I do not blame him for that. However…” her voice turned irritated, and she spun around to look back at Shiro, her signature frown on her face again. “Our marriage is political. However we feel about it doesn’t matter. Most demonic and angelic noble families are traditional. Whether about love or not, as long as the angelic princess is married to the demonic prince, the families will be formally aligned. They’d be too afraid of the royal families’ joint power to revolt. This is for the greater good. And I _know_ Keith knows that.”

Shiro stood up to join her, running his fingers through his hair again. “I know that, too. Or I’d never have pushed him into this the way Father did. Keith was always kind of a wild card, but… he always did kind of have a strong sense of justice. Sometimes, I think he’s even more willing than me to put the greater good above his own interests. But that’s why…”

“Why what?”

Shiro shook his head, sliding his arm into hers and escorting her through the veranda doors into the palace.

“Why I still can’t quite understand why he won’t come back.”

 

~Keith~

It was frustrating, not really being able to move.

Keith had used up far too much energy in the fight, especially to protect Pidge, Hunk, and Matt. Last time he’d been summoned to the human world, it hadn’t been anything like this-- his power had been fine. But he really didn’t know his limits, with his power cut in half the way it was.

As a result, he was too exhausted to do much more than eat and sleep, for the past few days. It wasn’t as if he was incapable of moving… it was just that when he did, he would get drowsy almost instantly and pass out.

He felt like he was getting snapshots into Lance’s life, thanks to the hundreds of times he’d forced himself awake, to open his eyes and find him, only to fall back asleep immediately, back into the deep, black tar pit of sleep that continued to trap him.

He’d open his eyes and there would be Lance, sitting at his desk, wearing a facemask and staring at a textbook and notebook, occasionally mouthing the words to himself as he read, poking himself in the face with the end of the pencil where the eraser should be, were it not completely rubbed off.

He’d open his eyes and see Lance pouring salt all along the walls of the room, wiping his hands together once he was done and smiling at Keith, claiming that he’d researched on the internet and found that salt circles also help at keeping minor demons away, since they might still want to come for Keith while he was weak.

He’d open his eyes and Lance would be gone, but he’d leave a note on the small table next to the bed, saying, “went to archery practice, but I brought that protection charm you taught me how to make, so I’ll be fine xoxoxo.”

He’d open his eyes and Lance would be sitting in his room, talking and laughing over the phone with his friends, who were apparently working together to make some kind of machine that would reveal glamoured demons.

He’d open his eyes and Lance would be crawling under the covers, trying to be sneaky and quiet, but it never worked, because Keith loved waking up just in time to hear that little satisfied sigh Lance would make when they were sleeping next to each other.

And those times, he would wake up just enough to pull that boy closer to him, to bury his face in the crook of his neck and breathe him in, his soft, gentle scent, and feel as if his heart was going to tear itself out of his chest. He was always far too tired to do anything more, and he knew that neither Lance nor he was really ready for that, anyway. But this was more than enough. This was more than he had ever hoped for.

Finally, he was starting to feel himself get stronger again. He could stay awake longer, listening to Lance talk about himself, amazed at how the smallest detail could be so fascinating to him. Lance’s favorite elementary school teacher, who actually kind of made math not so terrible. Lance’s family, his little niece, whose favorite color was orange, and who loved orange creamsicles, and got an orange creamsicle cake for her birthday. Lance’s homework for that day, a question he was having a tough time answering… Keith absorbed all of it, committing every last piece to memory.

And sometimes, Lance would look down and ask if Keith was still listening, and Keith would smile and answer with what Lance just said, and the boy would give him this huge, beautiful, unashamed smile that would make Keith want to fall in love with him again, and again, and again.

And eventually, Lance would fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, his mouth hanging open as he snored, and Keith would just kiss his collarbone and fall back asleep himself, smiling a little as he slept.

Finally, the weekend came, and Lance barely even bothered getting out of bed. He sat in the bed, reading one of his textbooks in the sunlight pouring through the window. Occasionally, he would peek down and ask Keith something out of nowhere, then go back to his reading. He liked to play with Keith’s hair while he talked, running his fingers through it and drawing little circles on Keith’s scalp with his fingertips, which definitely didn’t help Keith stay awake, but he definitely wasn’t going to tell Lance to stop doing it.

“So it’s gonna be the first competition before regionals start,” Lance was saying, the sun pouring golden light over his skin, which made him look… angelic. An amusing thought, to Keith. “And I’m not really too worried about it, but… if you’re feeling up to it, you can maybe come watch?”

“I’ll go.”

“I mean, you don’t have to, it’s probably gonna be boring…”

“I’m _going_ ,” Keith replied firmly, rolling over so that his head was in Lance’s lap, looking up at him. “I want to see the look on Charlie’s face when you crush him again.”

Lance looked pleased, a little blush coming into his cheeks as he muttered, “okay, then,” and then went back to his book.

And then:

“Hey Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you… ever been summoned before?”

He was still looking at his book, pretending as if he had asked only out of minor curiosity. But Keith could tell from the way that Lance’s muscles had tensed up underneath him that it was no passing question-- Lance had been wondering this for a long time.

“...Why do you ask?”

“Well… I thought… back when you first told me that your magic was only temporary… you sounded so sad. And even now, you almost never use magic on anything but yourself. You use magic to hide, magic to fly, magic to fight, but… you won’t touch anything else. Except the computer at the coffeehouse. Which Shay told me had to be completely rebooted after that.”

Keith smiled for a bit, remembering his eagerness. “I wanted ice cream.” But his smile faded, and he felt a hole start to open up in the center of his chest, a deep black one he never liked looking down into. “But no, I don’t like to make changes in this world if I don’t have to.”

“Because you were summoned before?” Lance guessed, his free hand once again beginning to twine itself through Keith’s hair, gentle and repetitive and relaxing enough for Keith to feel safe enough to answer, to open the cover to the dark hole and stare down into the depths. _How did you know?_

“Yeah,” he answered. “Because I was summoned before. Just once. Probably more than five hundred years ago now.”

“What happened?” Lance asked, his book abandoned, now listening with complete interest.

Keith swallowed, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, readying himself for the cold, icy plunge. “I was summoned, once, by a powerful old man who had summoned many demons before me. And he… never wanted to accept that anything had consequences. So he took it out on me.”

 

_~500 years ago~_

_Keith looked around at the room he found himself in upon stepping out of the portal that had reached down into Hell and swallowed him up in the middle of his joint training session with Shiro and Allura. It wasn’t a small room, but the mass clutter of objects and furniture that filled it seemed to make the walls shrink in on him, turning the stone tower room into a tiny dungeon cell._

_Sunlight poured in through the windows, blinding Keith, who had never really seen sunlight before then, except in the rare visits he’d made to Heaven to visit his fiance. Nominally, at least. He never really seriously considered the idea that he’d be marrying Allura someday._

_But after blinking the sunlight out of his eyes, Keith saw that the windows were actually mostly blocked by the clutter: huge bookshelves stuffed with crumbling scrolls and books of magic, their parchment torn from use, or the bindings split and broken. A pair of desks was strewn with potion ingredients: dragon skin, baby’s tears, nightshade, salamander’s eyes… and the distillation apparatuses with which to create them. And all around them were more books, more equipment for which Keith had no name, for they had no equal back in Hell._

_But he knew one thing for certain: they were all tools with which one summoned demons. He could feel the demonic energy in the room, practically smell it in the air, almost suffocatingly thick. Summoning circles, too, like the one he had just stepped through, decorated every possible piece of floor or wall that wasn’t occupied with_ stuff _, and every single one of them had been used plenty of times._

_This was a man who had summoned demons before. LOTS of demons._

_He was old, as was to be expected of any master sorcerer-- for it took years to learn enough to safely summon a demon of Keith’s caliber. Which the man had clearly done-- Keith tested the barriers surrounding the protection circle the man was standing in, and found no weaknesses._

_Keith felt self-satisfied at this. Finally, he’d been summoned, just like everyone else. He’d heard so many fellow demons talk about the human world, about the magnificent tricks they’d pulled off, that he’d been starting to worry that he’d never see it._ Take that, Shiro _, he thought, grinning to himself. His older brother’s misgivings about summonings were clearly nothing to worry about. Keith felt as strong as ever._

_But when he asked the old man what he wished for, he wouldn’t answer. He only said, “Yes! I’ve finally done it!” clapping his hands, his eyes twinkling with delight despite being hidden by the countless wrinkles on his face. “I’ve finally summoned the Demon Prince!”_

_Keith was flattered, but would much rather be let out of the cage, to see the world before he returned home. If, that is, he ever actually wanted to return home. But when he told the old man as much, he only laughed, saying that Keith only wanted to be out of the summoning circle so that he could kill the old man and be free of his contract, and he had summoned too many demons to be fooled by such a thing. Which wasn’t entirely wrong-- Keith_ had _planned to kill him if he’d actually succumbed, but… he really did just want to see more than the tower room, with its stone walls and stone floors._

_The old man began asking Keith for things, many things. To turn lead to gold, to clear the room of its clutter, to fill the room with lightning without burning a single thing. And every time Keith would comply, he’d get more and more delighted. And Keith warned him, that his powers on Earth were only temporary, unless the old man made a wish, but he would not listen._

_So while the gold turned to tarnished lead, and the removed clutter crumbled to dust, the old man swung an amulet of a protection circle around his neck, bringing Keith outside into an empty courtyard, overgrown with weeds, and asked Keith to grow him gardens of jewels that would rival heaven._

_But this time, Keith refused. His previous actions had been nothing but demonstrations, he claimed. If the old man wanted anything as grand as that, he would need to wish for it, and pay the appropriate price._

_Still the old man would not make his wish. Instead, he tightened the spells of the summoning circle so that the air seemed to crush Keith, sucking the air out of his lungs and breaking his bones, an extreme agony he hated that he could do nothing to avoid._

_Finally, he made the man his garden, since such a thing could likely not do much harm. He grew gardens that rivaled both those of Heaven and those of Hell, making leaves of emerald and peridot, roses crafted of the finest rubies, diamond sweetpeas that climbed the walls of the tower and then scattered their light on all things down below. And the old man was delighted._

_And then, he would leave Keith alone, selling the jewel flowers for money and then studying over his books, as if he had forgotten he was there at all, ignoring him entirely when he asked when the old man was going to make his wish._

_And then the old man asked him to topple the tower of his enemy, another powerful sorcerer who desired the power of Hell for himself. Again, Keith answered that he would only do so for the sake of the man’s wish. Again, the man refused, instead torturing Keith with a concoction of salt and holy water, which burned its way into every part of his body, leaving him feeling raw and contaminated._

_Finally, he did so, reaching out with his magic and reducing the tower of the old man’s rival to dust, such complete destruction that there were not even any ruins with which humans in the future could someday recover his memory. And the old man was delighted._

_Even as the jewel flowers faded and withered, until the courtyard became a swamp of desolate red mud, the vines that had once crawled the tower walls tearing out pieces of stone as they fell to the ground._

_Again, Keith asked the old man what he was going to wish for, that this time, he would not do so unless the old man made his wish, and paid the price. But he was beginning to see that the old man never wanted to pay the price. He only wanted magic, forever and ever. But demonic magic was never meant to be permanent, without consequences._

_Every time, the old man would ask him for something grand, and when Keith would refuse, he would devise some kind of unbearable torture for Keith, whether it be burning or breathing or breaking. And Keith was most certainly breaking._

_Eventually, he stopped bothering to demand a wish._

_Even when another rival of the old man rose to take the place of he who Keith had destroyed, whose youth and intelligence both made the old man hate her even more than he who was dead, but also to desire her._

_So again, he asked Keith for magic, this time the magic for youth. And Keith, who had seen the disaster his magic had wrought, tried so hard to refuse, but again the old man crushed the summoning circle, breaking Keith’s wings in many places._

_And so Keith granted the old man his youth, and the wrinkles smoothed out of his face, and he became a handsome young man, fit to be at the side of a young, beautiful, and powerful witch, with whom he had a son. And the old man was delighted._

_But when the old man’s youth faded, and the witch cursed him and destroyed his tower, the old man looked at his withered garden, his furniture crumbled to dust, and his skin wrinkled and shrunken and yellow like old paper, and the grave of his son who had died young, sickly with mysterious fever. And he grew angry, angry like the black clouds of a storm sweeping over the world, and he turned that anger on Keith._

_He cursed him, over and over again, his voice creaking as if filled with dust, cursing Keith’s powers, calling him useless, a waste, because what was the use of summoning such a powerful demon if all changes he made withered, crumbled, faded?_

_And finally, he asked Keith the impossible. Bring his son back from the dead, so that he may teach him magic._

_Keith begged him to please, please reconsider, because that was something that not even the most powerful of demons could truly do, even if he wished for it. He swore that if the man wished for permanent, eternal youth, Keith could grant it to him. If he wished for a beautiful garden of jewels, to be the king of a country, to make any man or woman fall in love with him, Keith could grant it to him. But not the return of his son._

_But the old man insisted, his voice crackling like lightning and scratching at Keith’s skin like sandpaper, that he wished for his only son to be reborn, and nothing else would suffice._

_Finally, Keith tried, gathering all of his power to bring a soul already departed back into the world, re-forging the long-lost body, taking both of the old man’s legs as payment. But even as he took them, he knew that they were not enough. So he took the old man’s left eye, too. He did not want these things, but he had no choice but to fulfill the wish. That was his contract._

_But the thing that rose was not the old man’s son, who had been fearless, but kind, never hesitating to ask Keith thousands of questions, and demanding that the demon play games with him. The thing that rose was not the young, sweet child Keith had felt a kind of affection for, the first example he’d encountered to show him that humanity was not worse than demons. It was a tormented soul, more wicked than any demon, laughing at destruction and destroying all that was left of the old man’s formerly glorious life. And the old man was horrified._

_He cursed Keith, over and over again, for failing to accomplish his task, even when the old man had wished for it, despite his persistence that the old man needed to make his wish. But Keith knew he could not grant this wish, and so he was still bound. Again, he begged the old man to wish for something else. He would not._

_Instead, the man went to the church, and did not get on his knees, for he had no legs, and begged the clergy to rectify his mistake and purify him of his demon, so that he may not hurt others the way he had hurt the old man._

_And they did. Exorcism, the “purification” of a demon, felt to Keith like all of the old man’s tortures all at once, burning and freezing and crushing and breaking and drowning, until he was falling, falling, into a familiar world where the sun never shone brighter than twilight, and the flowers were all crafted of jewels._

_He landed in the palace courtyard, bloody and battered and choking on tears, swearing that he would do anything possible to never return to the human world._

 

~Keith~

“I probably would never have recovered if it weren’t for Allura and Shiro,” Keith finished, staring up at the ceiling. He’d been so focused on his story, he hadn’t even felt tired, but now, the relief of having told it to Lance, of no longer burying it, was making him feel relaxed again, and sleepy.

Before he knew it, Lance was hugging him tightly and kissing his face, demanding that that old man be _punished_ and Keith couldn’t help but laugh, saying, “it happened centuries ago, Lance. He’s dead by now.”

Lance made a face, hugging Keith even tighter to himself. “I don’t care. No one deserves to get punished for not being able to do something they knew they couldn’t do in the first place. That’s just… I can’t… agh,”

Lance gave up, flopping over and pulling the blankets over his face.

Keith sat up, looking down at the Lance-shaped lump in the bed.

“Lance, are you… crying?”

“Shut up, no I’m not!”

“Yes you are.”

“...yes I am. Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“Good. Because I’m gonna keep crying. Dammit, Keith, why didn’t you ever tell me this before?!”

Lance pulled the blanket back down, and sure enough, his cheeks were glistening with tears. “I would have just hurried up and made a stupid wish. I feel… so cruel right now. You’ve been stuck here this whole time, just waiting for me to wish for _something_ , and I…”

“Lance… Lance…. LANCE,” Keith interrupted, feeling as if the hole in his heart were filling up for the first time since it had first opened. “For you, I’m willing to wait. As long as it takes. Take your time.”

Lance pondered this, wiping his cheeks. “...stop saying cheesy stuff like that. I keep telling you, cheesy pick-up lines are _my_ job…”

Keith laughed, grabbing the blanket and pulling it over the both of their heads, because he felt like, if the sunlight kept streaming over Lance that way, he looked too much like an angel. And when Keith wanted to kiss him, kiss the tears off of his cheeks, he liked to kiss the boy who was nothing but human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want you all to know that I don't enjoy putting poor Keith through this much pain. I don't know why I did. It just... my muse said it was necessary. I'm sorry.
> 
> Because of this, I'm adding angst to the story tags.


	8. Hesitation

The boys were starting to see Keith as a permanent fixture of their apartment. Not that they really minded, since Keith could also do some pretty _sick_ shit with that hunting knife he had, but was way different from most country boys with knives they were used to dealing with. He was actually… pretty quiet. Kind of reserved, even… _shy_. And yet somehow cocky when he was around Lance? They weren’t really sure, but Keith was a study in contrasts, and that made him pretty interesting.

Not that they really knew _just_ how often he was staying at the apartment. As in… all the time. After all, the guys had agreed pretty early on in their years living together that privacy was more sacred than holy water, and if there’s a lei hanging from your roommate’s door, you absolutely DO NOT go in under any circumstances. It was just bro code. But even though Lance had never put the lei on his door, they never really bothered to realize that Keith spent every night there, instead of just “preferring to hang out there because he didn’t really like his roommate,” like Lance had told them. Nick, Charlie, and Danny were simple guys. They generally took things at face-value. Even more common since Lance was usually a pretty genuine face-value kind of guy.

Still, did they notice that Keith was over pretty often? Yes. Did they notice that he slept a lot? Also yes. Did they notice that he had magical powers and was destroying minor demons every now and then? Definitely not. Did they realize he was _actually living with them_? Also no.

They just kind of acknowledge Keith as one of the many weirdos that seemed to attach themselves to Lance in one way or another. Like, the two tech-heads, Pidge and Hunk? What exactly did Lance have in common with either of them _at all_? Well, Hunk at least was a big softy, so they had that in common, but… Lance had tried out pretty much every sport under the sun, and Pidge didn’t even like going outside.

So they really didn’t pay that much attention to how much Keith had settled himself into Lance’s life, despite being all shadows and silence.

They had their suspicions, but they didn’t voice them.

 

~Malthias~

“Okay, Plutonium?”

“Check!”

“Baby’s tears?”

“Check!”

“Rowan wood trigger?”

“Check!”

Pidge grinned, holding up their Demon-Revealer proudly. “I think it’s done! It took like two weeks because we had to be extra careful when we refined the plutonium, but… what d’you think, Matt?”

Matt #2 smiled proudly, kind of disturbed that tears were coming to his eyes a bit. He really _was_ starting to feel like Pidge was his younger sister. “It looks great! I can’t believe you guys were able to fuse modern technology and demonological materials together!”

Pidge’s smile grew wider, and she hefted the Demon-Revealer in her palm, then aimed it at Matt. “So we designed this thing to be harmless, since the low-frequency waves it generates are _only_ intended to contact and reflect off of demonic glamour. But… if we miscalculated anything… we could be blasting you with regular radiation instead…”

“Um, yeah, maybe we should be testing this somewhere besides your family’s garage…” Hunk suggested, looking around nervously.

“Don’t _worry_ , Hunk, even if it doesn’t work, the amount of radiation put off by a piece of plutonium this small isn’t even enough to do any lasting damage. Especially not if we fire it only in short bursts. Do you have the radiation reader ready, just in case?”

Hunk waved a sensor in front of him, then put both hands on it, squeezing it tightly as he watched with notable concern.

“Okay, Matt, go ahead and glamour yourself,” Pidge said, practically thrumming with excitement at the prospect of testing her new invention.

Matt waved a hand over himself, concealing himself from all human eyes, including Hunk’s and Pidge’s, watching their expressions to determine the moment he’d most likely completely disappeared from their sight without moving a muscle.

“Just to confirm, you haven’t, uh… just moved, right?” Hunk asked.

“I’m standing in the exact same spot,” Matt answered, kind of amused by the little startled jump Hunk did as the result of a voice from nowhere.

Pidge shook her head, taking aim with the Demon-Revealer. “Alright, alright, here goes. Activating!”

The machine hummed a little bit, and then its display glowed, and… that was it. The gun was fairly quiet, and its production invisible. Anyone who looked at it would think it was just a toy, but…

Matt could see himself start to return into their view, looking down at his hands, which he knew were still glamoured enough to be transparent, but were opaque and green.

“It works!” he remarked, staring in awe at Pidge. “Pidge, it works!”

He ran to hug her, and then both of them were getting hugged by Hunk, and he felt pretty happy. The feeling of _achievement_ , of putting your head to a problem and figuring it out, was amazing. He hadn’t really felt that in a while. Back in the demon world, it had always felt as if no matter how much thought he put into breaking down walls, there would always just be another one behind it. He’d always been an alchemist, or a _scientist_ as they said here in the human world, but staying at Shiro’s side had meant he’d been tossed into the chaotic world of politics, where there was never a real feeling of success. Every achievement came at a vicious price.

“So wait… do you think we can get graded for this thing?” Hunk piped up.

“Hunk!” Pidge snapped.

“Right. Sorry.”

The trio broke up, and Matt asked Pidge when she was going to test it in the field.

She thought for a minute, and then answered, “well… I do have an idea…”

 

~Lance~

He was way more nervous than usual as he got ready for his first archery competition of the semester. Partially because it was his first competition since choking at Nationals, but mostly because Keith was going to be watching. Which he was happy about, _really_ happy about, but… what if he failed? Was Keith still going to like him if he failed miserably? What was he going to do if Keith didn’t like him anymore?

“Lance, are you okay?”

Keith. His voice as warm and smooth as always, he wondered why it had scared him so much at first, why he’d been so annoyed that he’d tried to worm his way out of his situation.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He swallowed, focusing on sliding on the chest-strap that gave support to his shooting arm.

“You looked worried,” Keith commented, making his little thoughtful frown-pout that Lance thought was extremely adorable.

“I’m fine!” he said again, but when Keith raised an eyebrow at him, he sighed and sat down on the couch, rubbing his eyes. “I’m scared I’ll mess up big time again.”

Keith sat down next to him, rolling his eyes. “Lance, you shot a gargoyle out of the air that you couldn’t even _see_. I think you can handle a standing target.” He paused, looking at Lance quizzically. “Which reminds me… how _did_ you do that?”

Lance felt himself smile a little bit. “I was following your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

“I knew you were looking at _something_ , and it didn’t seem good, so I just… shot where you were looking.”

“That’s still… not easy. I don’t know that many _demons_ who would do that.” He put his hand on Lance’s back, smiling as encouragingly as Lance was sure he could manage. “Come on, you’re gonna be great. If you want, I can curse your competitors.”

Lance laughed, feeling himself relax a bit. “Would that count as my wish, or can I schedule a payment plan?”

“Oh, curses are _easy_. And…” Keith paused. “What’s a payment plan?”

 

Lance was feeling pretty good about himself today. Keith was watching from behind the spectator’s line, Lance knew, in full view, but he felt pretty good about that, too. Because there was nothing better than showing off for your boyfriend, right?

And it was showing, too. He hadn’t been off-target _once_. Charlie was actually starting to get a bit angry.

Pidge and Hunk showed up, showing off their wacky-looking invention with big, goofy smiles on their face. It wasn’t the most attractive-looking thing, since it looked like a fusion between urban minimalism and Amish woodworking, but… the looks on his friends’ faces told him that it worked, so… aesthetic wasn’t really important.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them turn it on and start pointing it in different directions, which at first earned them some weird looks from the other spectators standing near them, but pretty quickly got them ignored. Briefly, Lance wondered what the others in the crowd thought it actually was. A speed recorder, maybe? It wouldn’t be the first time. Actually, Lance had gotten to know Pidge and Hunk best after they’d asked him if they could study his shooting for a project on inertia.

He understood why they thought now would be a place that demons were likely to show up. If Matt had told them the same thing Keith had told Lance, that any kind of negative emotion could summon a minor demon, and continued feelings of dejection could lead to getting one attached to you… a competition was a likely place to see one.

He was called up for his final shot, taking his place behind the line and slowing his breathing. Nick was trailing him by a fairly large margin, so as long as he even hit the target at all he was fairly guaranteed to win. It meant he could relax, close out all distractions, the hum of a crowd that’s trying to stay quiet, but isn’t succeeding. Ignore Nick joking that he should mess up big time to let him win. Focus only on the target, and any other things he wanted to see. Hunk pointing the Demon-Revealer in different directions while Pidge furiously took notes and whispered instructions. Keith watching him intently, as if it was the rest of the crowd that was glamoured, and Lance was the only person even there. He was always so intent, so focused…

Hunk turned, and a shape came into view, if only for a moment. And then Pidge elbowed him in the stomach, and he turned again, revealing the thing, high in the sky behind the targets, floating there, watching.

At least, Lance assumed it was watching. He wasn’t sure what else it could do, since it was literally nothing but a floating eye, but… it was a demon nonetheless.

He saw Keith start to move towards it, but hesitate. In this crowd of people, Keith moving towards the shooting range would be seen by everyone. They’d be afraid of him. They’d…

Taking another deep breath, Lance focused on his target, focused, focused, focused, adjusted his aim. Not quite right. Adjusted a tiny bit more, flexed the fingers of his hands…

And then shot the floating eye out of the sky.

 

“I can’t believe you were doing SO GOOD just to get silver,” Hunk complained, holding up Lance’s medal to the light. “And it’s not even real silver. Based on it’s relative weight, I’d say it’s like 99% nickel.”

The competition had ended, and while most of the competitors, including Lance’s roommates, had headed home for the day, Lance, Keith, Hunk, and Pidge had hung out at the archery range for a bit afterwards, playing with Blue the cat, who was being as cuddly with Lance as ever.

“What?! Are you telling me the competition medals aren’t even _real_?!” Lance shouted, snatching the medal away from Hunk and inspecting it suspiciously. Blue began batting at the strap of the medal where it hung down in front of her face. “But I keep telling my mom that if they ever can’t meet the bills, she should just sell off my medals… now I feel… really stupid…”

Pidge’s expression flattened. “You… didn’t know that they don’t use real precious metals?”

“It’s called a _silver_ medal, Pidge, not a _nickel_ medal.” He paused, glancing at Hunk. “It’s at least full gold at the Olympics, right?!”

“Nah, I think it’s gold-plated.”

Lance’s shoulders slumped. “My life is a lie.”

Keith put a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t have to do that, Lance. I could have just taken it out with magic...I just didn’t think of the right spell fast enough.”

Lance shrugged, but leaned a bit into Keith’s touch. “It’s okay. I really didn’t think Nick was actually going to shoot his last shot _completely perfectly_. And silver’s more than enough to get me through to other competitions, especially with my score. So… it’s really okay. You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yeah! We should celebrate!” Hunk suggested. “I mean, we got the Demon-Revealer to work _without_ being likely to kill anyone with radiation poisoning, _and_ Lance got silver! Come on, I made cookies!”

“WHAT? Hunk’s cookies?! Keith, we have to go. It’s important.”

Keith frowned, but didn’t refuse, even as Lance set the cat down, and started pushing him to go faster. “The cookies are important?”

“Yes, they’re _very_ important.”

 

~Malthias~

It was almost painful, to see Prince Keith as happy as he was. All of them were invited over to Hunk’s house, where they played with Hunk's enormous St. Bernard, drank coffee and ate fresh cookies, which Keith liked so much that he ate the entire rest of the (72-cookie) batch. And then Hunk’s moms asked if they were staying for dinner, and none of them could say _no,_ so they ended up eating a full pulled-pork meal _after_ the cookies, plus mango ice cream for dessert.

Matt already felt as if _he_ was being adopted into Pidge’s family, but in his case, it was because he was appropriating someone else’s identity. But with Keith, it was… different. Nobody had ever really said “no” to him that often when he was growing up, save Shiro and Allura, but it also meant that no one ever really tried getting close to him save those two, either. Keith had grown up as a fairly isolated child, so seeing him so surrounded by people, talking and laughing and making fun of Lance, but then sitting in his lap while they played video games against Pidge and Hunk in the living room… it made Matt so happy for him.

It made him wish that Shiro could see this, see how much his little brother had changed. If it were under different circumstances… he would be delighted, Matt was sure. Shiro had always been worried that Keith pushed people away too much, that he would never fit anywhere, especially since he was second to the throne.

But these _were_ the circumstances. Matt knew the importance of his mission, but… he was having a hard time forcing himself to accomplish it. How could he possibly tear Keith away from the first real happiness it looked like he’d ever had, especially in the human world, which they’d been so certain he could never possibly enjoy?

Matt was starting to realize, that in all of the talk of peace and union between demons and angels… both sides seemed to totally ignore humanity, stuck in the middle. Humanity, which was always inventing and changing and moving and _living_ , in a way that neither demons nor angels could do. Humanity was as much a part of their universe as angels and demons, and yet… where were they in considerations of peace outside of collateral damage? Demons used the human world as a proving ground, as a place to expand. Angels used the human world to demonstrate their superior power. But they had always considered individual humans to be so insignificant, so powerless, that they ignored them.

And yet here was this one human boy, who had somehow completely captured the demon _Prince_ , without even using a protection circle! How was that powerless, in any way? And how could Matt possibly destroy that peace?

Except he had to.

While the other four all fell asleep while watching _Bambi_ , Matt slid off of the armchair he’d been sitting in as quietly as possible and snuck past Keith and Lance, who were leaning against each other and snoring softly, with Lance draped a bit over Hunk’s torso, which was probably fairly comfortable, considering that Pidge was also leaning against it.

Since it was so late at night, the house was completely quiet. Even the dog had gone to sleep for the night in its kennel, and Matt finally forced himself to do something he’d been putting off for a long, long time.

Out of the pocket of his hoodie he pulled a small, round crystal sphere, which glowed dimly when he poured his energy into it, focusing on who he was going to reach on the other side.

In it, he could see Shiro, the Demon King, look up in surprise and relief. “Malthias! Are you okay?!”

“What, me? Yeah, I’m…” He trailed off, glancing over to the group of young humans and Keith, sleeping in a heap on the couch.

“Malthias?”

Matt shook his head, going back to his task at hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t report in earlier, Shiro. Things have been hectic.”

“Where is Keith? Is he alright? Is his master cruel?”

Matt swallowed. “He’s fine, Shiro. His power was limited a lot from coming through a portal so small, but… he’s still most certainly our fiery prince. I couldn’t defeat him. I’m...still trying to figure out how to bring him back.”

Shiro frowned, looking at him intently through the scrying crystal’s view. “Malthias… what’s wrong?”

Matt took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to word his misgivings about his current situation. “Shiro, I… Keith… might never come home.”

“What? Why not? Is he trapped again? If he’s being tortured, I order you to--”

“No!”

Shiro looked a bit startled at Matt interrupting him, but waited for his friend’s explanation.

“No, Shiro, he’s… happy.”

“In the human world? That’s impossible, he hates it there.”

“If you saw him yourself, you’d understand. His master isn’t cruel at all. I wouldn’t even call him his master. He _doesn’t even use a protection circle,_ Shiro. He just… _trusts_ him. And the prince, he… he looks so at home. I’ve never seen him like this. I can’t… it’s getting harder and harder to make myself want to force him.”

“Malthias…”

“Um, anyway, I’m still trying to figure out a good way to get him back, which is going to be tough now that I can’t open a portal on my own. But, I wanted to let you know that we’re both okay, and we’ll figure this out eventually. Okay?”

Matt heard stirring from the couch, and quickly finished his message. “I must return to my duties, Your Majesty. Malthias, departing!”

He terminated the report, leaning up against the back of the couch and sighing. If he couldn’t bring Keith home, someone was going to have to. Someone a bit more ruthless.

 

~Shiro~

Malthias’ message disturbed him more than he believed possible. Court the following day was filled with arguments, debates over whether they even needed this peace anyway, and even under-the-breath comments about whether Shiro was even suited to be King, since he couldn’t even control his own brother. There were small revolts happening in the east, among minor demons who felt threatened by the Prince’s place in the human world. _And_ even the greater demons were beginning to point fingers at the angels, suspecting them of setting up the whole thing because they detested the idea of their precious pure princess marrying a filthy demon.

It was taking all of Shiro’s wit and self control to keep civil war from breaking out. It had happened several times before, back when Shiro’s father was still King. The engagement was intended to prevent it from happening again. But what was he supposed to do now?

“What do you mean, he ‘can’t’?” Allura fumed, pacing across the palace’s obsidian floors. As soon as his communication with Malthias had ended, Shiro had felt as if he had to confess his misgivings to someone, and Allura was the only one he could trust.

“I feel the human must have brainwashed both of them, unless Keith has forgotten what happened the last time. You remember, don’t you, Shiro? The way we found him in the castle courtyard, his wings in tatters, bleeding from so many places, bones broken… I never thought he’d trust anyone ever again. To think that now he’d want to _stay_ there is… well, it’s impossible.”

“But what if Malthias is right, Allura?”

She sighed, sitting on the arm of his throne, her dress draped over the sides. “We can’t afford for him to be right. Even the angelic forces are getting angry. They’re threatened by demons as powerful as Keith and Malthias having their way in the human world, even if they haven’t made any major moves, besides taking out any demons that threaten them. Which you’d think would make the angels thankful, but… Keith and Malthias are more threatening to them than a million minor demons. If I do not do _something_ , they will act.”

Shiro noticed her frustrated frown again, and resisted the urge to hug her, comfort her. Difficult when she was this close. But why wouldn’t she be this close? She was his friend. His brother’s fiance.

“Sometimes I wish…” she continued, staring up at the crystal chandelier above them, “that our parents had never arranged this engagement in the first place. It sometimes feels as if… this result was inevitable. If perhaps, we had been free to make our own choices, our peoples would not be so disappointed when we escaped their expectations.”

Shiro nodded, patting her on the shoulder. “We’ll figure this out, Allura. We always do.”

She smiled at him, and then her expression hardened in determination, and she got to her feet, her wings spreading out around her. “Yes. I will figure it out. On my own, if I have to.”

And then she was striding to the balcony, opening her wings, and soaring out into the ever-twilight sky, leaving Shiro to hope she was not about to do what he was pretty sure she was going to do.

 

~Allura~

To be honest, Allura hadn’t visited the human world in… her entire life. So almost a thousand years, give or take. All that she knew about it was learned either from Keith, or from “guardian angels,” those whose jobs it was to watch over humans, answer prayers, and ensure that demonic powers didn’t find too much influence over humanity. And from them, all of the reports had been completely negative. As far as she knew, the human world was a vicious place where any moments of kindness were quickly drowned out by cruelty.

She figured it was best to prepare for the worst.

She changed her dress for a more suitable set of battle armor inherited from her mother, and carefully fitted herself with as many weapons as she could carry.

“Princess? Has something happened?”

She didn’t bother to look to know that it was Coran, her father’s advisor and her personal attendant.

“I am going to fetch Keith myself,” she answered with conviction, spiraling her hair up into a tight bun and carefully pinning it into place.

Coran frowned. “But the demons…”

“I know.” She sighed, turning to face him. “After I retrieve him, as an act of faith, I’ll deliver him to the demonic courts instead of heaven. I had _hoped_ that he was going to listen to Malthias, but… Malthias seems just as ensnared as Keith is, now. I’m one of the only people he trusts. And also..." she grimaced, but she felt a sort of fierce delight pulsing through her. “Unlike Malthias, if I can’t convince him with words, I am perfectly capable of convincing him by force."

“Princess, please! You needn’t endanger yourself over something like this. Keith is just a bit frightened of the marriage. And I would be, too, if I saw you in full battle armor all the time.” He chuckled a bit to himself, but Allura just raised her eyebrows at him. “I’m sure he’ll come around in time.”

“We don’t _have_ time,” Allura snapped, stretching out her wings to test the amount of room the slot in the armor made for them allowed her. “I won’t allow him to be tortured like last time. Or worse, that he’ll learn to trust humanity, only to be fooled. If he’s supposed to be my husband, I won’t tolerate him being broken again. I’m going to save him, Coran. Please, let me.”

He frowned, but slowly, nodded. “Allura… Princess, be careful.”

She smiled, embracing him tightly. “I will, Coran. And I will return soon, of course.”

She stepped back, opening a portal with ease, a glowing white thing that opened up to a blue evening sky. Because that is the privilege of angels-- having the ability to enter the human world whenever they please, but almost never bothering to do so.

But this time, there were special circumstances. Allura would not hesitate to enter the human world herself, if it was for the sake of her fiance, whom she did love. But perhaps not the way she wished she loved him. Nevertheless, she was coming. Whether he wanted her to or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Having a lei on the door comes from my own roommate-experience. It meant that someone's got a "friend" over and they may or may not be having sex. Never actually saw it used, but it was good to have a plan ahead of time. I think other roommates had, like, socks or something, but in our apartment it was always leis. We just had them lei-ing around (sorry).
> 
> We're about to get introduced to a character that is going to throw a wrench in a LOT of things... just like he does in canon. ;)


	9. Concern

Wherever Allura walked, demons either scattered or disintegrated instantly. Compared to heavenly grace, the meager existence most of them had been able to eke out in the human world was simply no match. She pitied them, deeply. Their magic made them stronger than humans in some ways, but they could not survive on Earth without humanity, and most had been there for so long that they’d lost almost all of their attachment to the demon world, and thus the majority of their power. But it had happened so slowly, she doubted that many of them even realized how weak they had become.

Demons in the human world were forced to rely on humanity for their power. Human wishes, and their subsequent payments, were most powerful, but without it, demons could survive on human curses, fears, negative emotions of any kind. But truly, they always seemed to forget that Hell was always deemed to be their sanctuary, their paradise.

She had never imagined that Keith could forget that, too.

She could only imagine Shiro, back in Hell, agonizing over both his brother and his best friend, too tied down by duty to anything about it. Would Keith or Malthias someday become like the tiny smoke-wisps that vaporized as she passed? No, that would be impossible. They were too strong in the first place. And not likely to get addicted to human suffering the way the others had. Still, she couldn’t help but worry, and to feel sorry for those who simply couldn’t stand her very presence.

She wished she could heal them, instead, but ultimately, it may have been best that those weak souls were put out of their misery.

The unfortunate thing was that not only the demons appeared to be scattering wherever she walked. The humans, too, paused and stared at her for a long while, mouths gaping, eyes wide. She expected one of them to ask her for divine forgiveness, but to her surprise, they did not. Instead, one young man went up to her and asked what convention she was going to, since he didn’t know there was one in town that day.

Allura didn’t know what a convention was, but she was a bit perplexed at human audacity. What happened to humans that cowered in awe at the mere sight of an angel?  Who begged for forgiveness and retribution? Or perhaps those were all just bedtime stories her father had told her.

Still, most humans _did_ seem to be intimidated by her presence, to the point that despite her attempts to ask any of them if they knew the location of a boy either by the name of Keith or a man named Malthias, they would quickly divert their gazes and walk away, leaving her perplexed. She had been told that humans no longer believed in angels or demons, but perhaps her size and wings were daunting to them. Some of them were beginning to… hold small machines up to their eyes between her and them, and she wasn’t sure what they were doing, but it gave her a bad feeling.

“Wow, great cosplay! Can I take a picture?”

“Take what? I have nothing you may need, human.”

“Ummm… okay?” The human girl cocked her head to the side, looking Allura’s battle armor up and down. “I mean if you don’t want me to take a picture, that’s cool, but… it’s just a photo, dude.”

“Wait! Now that I have your attention,” Allura breathed, relieved to be able to progress in her mission thanks to the girl’s courage, “Do you know a boy named Keith? He should have appeared in this realm recently. Or a man named Malthias. Either will be sufficient to aid me in completing my mission.”

The girl blinked, frowning up at Allura. “Wow, you’re really into your cosplay. Which, y’know, I can dig. But, you’re like, really pretty. I think you’re scaring the guys away.”

“Do the ‘guys’ scared away include Keith or Malthias?”

“Um, no, I haven’t seen them today. You mean Keith, that transfer student that’s always hanging out with the archery club?”

Allura brightened. Yes! This was progress!

“Oh, most certainly! Could you direct me to him?”

“Uh… I don’t really know where he is, we’re not really tight, since I’m a theater geek, but, um… you could probably hang out at the archery range? I think that’s where those guys hang out. But, uh… if you need me for, you know… anything… can I give you my phone number?”

“I am most grateful for any aid you can offer me, and you are most kind.”

The girl’s face lit up, and she quickly dug through the side pockets of the bag she had slung over her back for a piece of paper and a writing instrument, and scrawled a series of numbers. “Um, I’m Megan. Call me for your next cosplay, okay?”

And then she ran off, her cheeks bright pink, though Allura was unsure why. And around her, too, the boys that had formerly run away looked incredibly put out.

Perhaps she stood out too much. Once she was out of sight, she would have to glamour herself. It would not hide her power, but it would at least reduce the interference of humanity.

After this was done, and at least her wings and armor were concealed, she found herself amidst a flow of young adults moving through the city, talking amongst themselves.

It felt odd, that suddenly they were not looking at her at all, except briefly in passing, before turning back to their small machines, or their friends. She was used to being the angel princess, stared at, respected, admired, in both Heaven and Hell. To be ignored by humanity, even if it was on purpose, felt extremely odd to her.

With her powers, she reached out for the presence of a strong demonic force, somewhere nearby. There were demons everywhere, of course, but nothing worth paying attention to. Only… there.

She could sense Keith. He was nearby, and still quite powerful, thus easy to find. Especially for her, who had no need of a human wish or human emotions to use magic. Such was the privilege of angels.

She began to make her way through the crowd, which was thickening as night fell, quite the opposite of what she expected of humanity, who, she had been told, still feared the dark. Ah-- but there were lights, blinking on to light the paths, much brighter than any candle.

It reminded her, oddly, of the many fires of Hell, lighting the ever-dark streets, somehow seeming to her quite warm and inviting. She had walked them many times with Shiro, as he pointed out which shops were his favorites, whose food was the best, whose enchanted lyre played the best music. Keith, too, but he had been too morose, avoiding pointing out his favorite haunts. Probably because, Allura suspected, he wanted to keep them to himself, for times when he needed to be alone. She had never pried them from him.

She shook her head, divesting herself of such fond memories. This was the human world, not Hell. The night would not last forever.

She continued making her way through the crowd, now with single-minded purpose, knowing that she could easily remove Keith’s contract, once she got there.

Accidentally, in her haste, she bumped shoulders with a man with long, white hair, not even having noticed he was so close.

“Oh, my apologies,” she replied automatically, but when she looked, she could not see him anywhere. Perhaps he had been walking too quickly for her to keep track of him.

But it didn’t matter. She was almost to where Keith was.

 ~

Glamouring herself completely allowed her to watch from an extreme distance, sitting atop a nearby building and viewing her target with absolute clarity despite being so far. And the more she watched, the more baffled she became.

Keith was sitting in a small gathering place labeled “Sunrise Cafe” with a trio of humans, small cups of dark liquid placed on the table between them. And Keith was smiling? And laughing?

And he even let one of them touch him. Not once or twice, either. Occasionally the tall, lean one would absentmindedly reach out and rest his arm over the back of Keith’s chair, or over Keith’s shoulders…

She’d always known Keith to hate physical contact. Especially since his first summoning, where the master had only ever entered his circle in order to enact punishment. And yet here Keith was, not even flinching at this human boy’s touch, sometimes even _leaning into it_ , with this peculiar, satisfied smile on his face.

That was it. He was most certainly enchanted. Why else would he pretend to be human? Why else would he slide his fingers into the human boy’s hands as they got to their feet, waving goodbye to the other two. Why else would they walk this way, through the street, in full view of all who could see?

The only other way it could possibly make sense would be if he were to love that human, and, well… that was impossible. It was impossible… right?

In spite of herself, the thought sent a little sting of pain through her heart. It was true that she’d never loved Keith romantically, but to have been abandoned so completely was… a bit insulting, if she were to be honest.

But no. She was sure that this was just some kind of human curse meant to torment Keith further. And she’d have to put a stop to it.

 

~Lance~

He woke up in the middle of the night to pee, extricating himself from the tangle of Keith’s arms, smiling like an idiot, giving the demon a kiss on the cheek before making his way to the bathroom, his eyes barely open. After he was done with that, he kind of had a sweet tooth, so… maybe he’d drop by the second floor laundry room and grab a pack of mini-oreos from the vending machine…

Yawning, he slipped his feet into his blue-lion fuzzy slippers and made his way out into the hallway as quietly as he could, squinting against the sudden harshness of the hall lighting. He could take the elevator, but… nah, the stairs were faster. And better for the environment, anyway.

A large window framed the stairwell, sometimes open during the late spring and early fall to let in cool air. And also open now, pouring frigid winter chill into the building. He shivered, feeling the cold even under his night robe, wondering what crazy RA had left the window open, or even why they’d opened it in the first place.

“Maybe there was something smelly, and they opened it to get fresh air?” he muttered to himself, going to the window to close it. But before he reached it, he paused, taking a step back. No… he’d seen too much weird shit over the past few weeks to not be suspicious of an open window in the middle of the night. That’s like, a classic horror movie scenario. But… he checked his robe pocket for the protective charm Keith had helped him design, and it was there. And in the other pocket, he’d remembered to grab the Demon Revealer 2.0, a second model Pidge and Hunk had cooked up that was about the size of a laser pointer (and also worked as one. He’d used it to play with Blue a few times already). Quickly, he raised the machine and pointed it at the open window, watching carefully for any signs of demonic activity.

There was nothing. He let out his breath, shaking his head at his paranoia. No demons, just a window someone had forgotten to close.

He stuck the Demon Revealer 2.0 back in his pocket and hurried to close the window, just because he was a nice guy. “They’ll probably waste like two hundred dollars of heat just because of this one window for a night, so…” he muttered to himself, laying his hand on the latch of the window.

And then he felt a pair of hands grab his nightrobe, yanking him through the window.

“Wha-NO!” He screamed, even as he felt himself tumbling forward, the ground approaching… and then he was being lifted skyward by the collar of his nightrobe, riding up around him.

“What-who are you?!” he shouted, trying to get a look at whatever was carrying him, but could see nothing. He squirmed in its grip, trying to grab the Demon Revealer, managing to grab onto it and shine it upwards, at where whatever was holding him should be.

But still there was nothing. He was flying fast, already far past campus now, and as far as he could tell, there was nothing. But he could _feel_ the thing’s hands in his robe, the way they tangled the fabric around him, choking him.

“Don’t you dare drop me! How the Hell are you even--?!”

“It’s not Hell you should be looking to,” replied a woman’s voice from above him. “You should always look up, never down.”

And then, suddenly, the figure came into view, the same way Keith had reappeared after his glamour, but… it was different. Keith’s glamour always seemed to fade in and out, where this being’s glamour shimmered and then snapped out, so brightly that it stung Lance’s tired eyes. He had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment before he could look up again, to take in the thing that was carrying him.

An angel. It could be nothing else, with its enormous, pure white wings, white-and gold, shimmering armor, and its face, that of the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.

“Wh-what do you want with me?!” He managed to get out, once he recovered from the sight of her.

“Nothing. I’d rather I didn’t have to do this, but you’ve given me no choice.”

She let go of him, and Lance felt himself freefalling, his heart pounding in his chest, and he reached out for something, anything, to catch himself, to keep himself from hitting the ground…

His fingers hit cold metal and he desperately reached to grab on, the skin of his hands chafing as he desperately held onto the flagpole he found himself dangling from, high atop a twenty-story building.

“Release Keith from his contract with you immediately.”

“What? How do you--” His mind was whirring, mostly from fear and panic, so it took him a while to reach his sudden, terrible conclusion. “You’re Keith’s fiance, aren’t you?!”

“Correct. And I want you to give him back to me,” she answered, hovering in the air in front of him, her eyes fierce and cold.

“I… I can’t,” Lance answered, feeling his fingers beginning to freeze to the metal of the flagpole.

“You can. Even without loss of life. Just wish for him to come save you, and the price won’t even be very steep. Truly, it is the best solution.”

“Did you have to _threaten my life_ to reach that solution?!” he screamed, knowing that his hands were going numb, and he couldn’t hold on forever.

The angel’s face softened, and she sat on the edge of the building, tucking her wings around her. “To be honest, your presence vexes me. Are you the reason he refuses to return? Despite all that his brother has to go through in his absence?”

“I don’t know, okay? Why don’t you ask _him_?”

She pouted. “He refuses to see me. I’m the reason he ran away, if you recall. But he’ll come for you, if you call for him.”

“But he’s so tired… he can’t come right now.”

“If you die, he’ll still be freed of his contract.”

“What is _wrong_ with you?! I thought angels were the _good_ guys!”

“I am doing what is necessary to save as many lives as possible.” And for a moment, Lance was stunned to see that her face actually turned extremely unhappy, as if she was thinking of something distant and painful. He felt… sorry for her.

Except for the fact that he was still _dangling from a building!_  And worse, he was losing his grip. His skin was frozen to the pole, but gravity was stronger than the freezing, and he was beginning to fall again, the frost bringing much of the skin of his fingertips with it, so that even as he fell, his fingers were bleeding.

_Please, don’t let me die like this. I just left him asleep… he doesn’t even know where I am… Keith… should I use my wish to ask you to save me?_

_But then… I might never see you again._

Then again, if he died, he’d never see him again anyway.

The ground was coming up to meet him, and Lance was regretting being such a damn good samaritan and trying to close the stupid window. He should have just gone to get his oreos and then gotten back in bed with his boyfriend, where he was warm and safe and happy.

He felt a rush of wind, and then he was being lifted into the air in a pair of familiar arms, gently closing around him, lifting his legs, and slowing his descent to the point that he drifted no more quickly than a feather.

“Keith!” he shouted, burying his face in the demon’s nightshirt… which was actually one of Lance’s hoodies, now that he looked at it… but it did nothing to change his delight.

“Are you alright?”

“No! Jesus, what took you so long?”

“I was still asleep… but I heard you… calling out to me.”

Had he? In his mind, maybe, but...

Was their connection really that strong?

No matter. He had to focus on the issue at hand.

Keith set him gently down on the ground, frowning down at his bleeding fingertips. “I wish I could heal them for you,” he whispered, “but…”

“I know, I know, you’ll just make it worse. I’m okay, Keith. But, uh…”

“I know.” He turned, facing the angel, who had also alighted on the ground, glaring at the both of them. “Allura, I always thought you were kind. How could you do something like this to someone not involved? This is just between me, you, and Shiro.”

“How is he not involved?!” she shouted, covering the distance between them in a flash, a glowing golden whip appearing in her hands, barely stopped by Keith’s arm. “He’s put some kind of spell on you, hasn’t he? That’s why you won’t go home… why you’ve left Shiro to worry, to allow the demonic nobility to even call your brother unfit for the throne!”

“It’s not a spell, Allura.”

“You hate humans, Keith.”

Lance, despite his intense fear of the angel (for good reason), couldn’t help but notice the mix of emotions in her voice. Confusion. Anger. Fear. But also compassion. Maybe even love.

“Not anymore,” Keith answered, his voice barely above a whisper. “Allura, please.”

“I cannot prioritize the life of a single human over the lives of hundreds of demons and angels who would be lost in another war, Keith,” she hissed, her eyes filling with tears. “I thought you understood that.”

“And I can’t just let you kill him in order to free me,” Keith answered, laying a hand on hers, where it held the golden whip. “Allura, please. Please. Find another way to solve this. It exists. I know it does. Shiro’s just too thick-headed to notice it. Don’t… take Lance away from me. Please. Please, don’t do that. I love him.”

Allura stepped back, her blue eyes wide, staring between Keith and Lance, stunned and confused, almost… pained. “I’ve never believed you capable of begging,” she breathed.

Keith avoided her gaze, sticking his hands into the pockets of Lance’s hoodie, where Lance knew his hunting knife was resting. “I’m no angel. I’m not… great at putting the kingdom before the people I care about. I won’t let it happen. Even if I have to fight you.”

Allura’s frown deepened, her eyes still watery. “Keith, if you stay away from Hell too long, you’ll grow so… weak. I… I don’t understand. I...”

Suddenly, she opened her wide, white wings and leapt into the sky, disappearing out of sight as quickly as she’d appeared.

And then, of course, Keith collapsed.

~

Keith slept. On and on, long after Lance had brought him back to the dorm, through the next morning, and through the next day, only waking up long enough to tell him that Allura wasn’t there anymore. She’d returned to Heaven, but could come back anytime. Because she was an angel.

And then he’d apologized, claiming it was his fault that it had happened at all, that he hadn’t anticipated an angel coming while he was asleep, that he should have been more careful…

And all Lance could do was assure him that it was no one’s fault. That he’d been scared, but it was over now. Keith just needed to sleep, through the effort it had taken him to appear at Lance’s side at just the right moment, to ride the winds, to hold Allura back the way he had. He needed to recover.

And as he slept, fitfully, with a frown on his face, Lance couldn’t help but feel a little bit sick inside, wondering if Allura’s claim were already true. If Keith stayed in the human world too long, with his powers cut this way… he could get sick. Would he deteriorate, until he was no more powerful than the gargoyle Lance had destroyed with his arrow?

No. He couldn’t imagine Keith that weak, or that conniving. Still, it dug at him, in the core of his mind, even as he tried to focus on his classes, his homework, his archery practice.

It dug at him even as he made his way back from grocery shopping, loaded down with the usual, enough food to feed a family of ten, and all of it for Keith, of course. He was frowning enough that his friends had taken notice, with Hunk pausing in his explanation of why the Demon-Revealer 2.0 probably hadn’t worked on an angel to ask Lance if he was okay.

But now the world was quiet, and Lance just wanted to put his mind to rest, to tell himself that maybe Allura was exaggerating. Maybe she was just being selfish. But… something in the way she’d talked to Keith had sounded so… _genuine_ to him. He was terrified of her, but… he couldn’t help but believe that she really did care about Keith, in her own way. A thought which dug at him. How could it not? She was beautiful, more than he could have imagined. He felt… jealous of her.

Stupid! He couldn’t think that way! But… was she right? Was he actually hurting Keith… more than Keith was telling him?

“Excuse me…” a voice called out, and Lance turned, almost smacking the newcomer with his grocery bags. There was a man, dressed in deep purple robes, smiling at him gently. “I thought you may need some assistance?”

Lance glanced at the man suspiciously. “What, like carrying my bags? Nah, I’m good.”

“No… I mean… you appear to be having a problem with demons.”

Lance jumped, his grocery bag of ice cream and vegetables falling out of his hand and spilling out over the concrete sidewalk. “How did you…?”

The man reached up to brush long white hair out of his eyes, then began helping Lance pick up his groceries. “I am an exorcist. I can sense these sorts of things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Well… I can help you save your demon friends.”

“Why would you do that?” Lance asked, quickly snatching his groceries out of the man’s hands. “And who are you, anyway?”

“My name is Lotor,” the man said with a warm smile that made Lance shiver. “And I simply wish to aid others as much as I can.”


	10. Of Demons and Angels

~Lance~

Lance pulled back on the bowstring and let the arrow fly, sailing through the air with a whizzing sound and sinking deep into its target.

_Demons belong in Hell, Lance, no matter how much chaos they create here. Unless they return, they will eventually fade to nothing._

He pulled another arrow from his quiver, the muscles in his face so tight that it felt like they were pulling on the nerves of his brain. Another deep breath. Release.

_I can help you, and him. You won’t even have to make a wish, or pay the price. You’ll be purified of the contract you never wanted to make._

The arrow plunged into the yellow core of the bulls-eye, a perfect perpendicular from its surface, so that it looked only as if a fly had landed on it.

_It is better for the both of you._

He loosed his last arrow, feeling the fiberglass slip through the leather over his hand, the energy of the bow flexing out of the shape it had bent it into, the gathered tension poured into the notch of the arrow.

He wondered if it was possible for him to pour all of his own tension into something, and let it fly far away from him, like his bow did with his arrow. He wasn’t even sure anymore if the headache he was feeling was from Lotor, or if it was just sore from frowning too much. Not that the two weren’t related.

The arrow slid, again, perfectly into the center of the yellow core, and Lance yanked off his shooting glove in disgust, staring at the bare fingers.

The skin was as smooth as it had ever been, if a bit callused. There was no sign of the skin he had ripped off when he’d fallen from the frozen flagpole Allura had dropped him on. It annoyed him, because he owed it to Lotor. The previous day’s shooting practice hadn’t gone very well thanks to the injuries on his hands, because every time he let loose an arrow, it felt as if his fingertips were on fire.

But now it was better than ever. He hated it.

Lotor had healed his fingers in a “gesture of good faith,” but when Lance had complained that he would only be worse later, Lotor had laughed and claimed that only demonic magic faded that way. Lotor was a holy man, not a demon.

But still, Lance felt uneasy. He refused to believe that Lotor was offering to help him simply out of the goodness of his own heart. But he had no idea what the exorcist’s actual motives _were_ , and he certainly hadn’t been eager to divulge them, with that calm, elegant face.

He began putting his bow back in its case, sitting down on the ground with a sigh. As he sat, he noticed a bit of movement, and turned his head to see a pair of tiny, glowing yellow eyes watching him from the shadows of the equipment shed.

“Red, seriously, that’s creepy,” Lance said out loud, making a face at the cat. “If I didn’t _know_ it was you, I would’ve thought you were a demon.”

The cat flicked its tail, then looked behind itself, where another fluffy tail appeared, soon to be joined by the full cat, in all of her poofy gray glory.

The two cats rubbed heads, and then began to groom each other, purring softly all the while.

Lance watched them, resting his cheek on his hand and grumbling, “I don’t know how you two get along so well when you’re, like, polar opposites. Blue loves me, Red hates me… but hey, at least I know exactly where you stand, right Red?”

The red cat glanced up at him, blinking slowly before getting to his feet and striding into the light, coming to a stop just before Lance, his gaze boring into Lance’s face.

“I’m not gonna pet you. I’ve learned my lesson. You’re just going to bite me.”

Red flicked his tail, and then sprang into a full run, darting past Lance and out of the shooting range in the blink of an eye.

Lance sighed, closing his bow case and leaning back, looking up at the sky, watching the little puffs of cloud that rose out of his breaths. Blue wasted no time, settling into Lance’s readily-available lap and purring loudly, her claws pulling at the fabric of Lance’s jeans as she massaged them with her front paws, occasionally poking at Lance’s skin as she did so. But he didn’t mind. He was used to it by now.

Absentmindedly, he stroked her fur as he continued looking up at the sky, the deep, pure blue that held the universe behind it. _You should always look up, never down_ , Allura had told him while she carried him through the sky.

Angels existed, just like demons did. But where was God in all of this mess? In all of these rules, and politics, and war… no one had mentioned Him, not even once. Lance’s mother would have a fit.

Was it weird that, despite everything that was happening, despite being in love with a demon and having accepted the likelihood that that was a sin… he still wanted to believe that there was a God? He wanted to believe that there was some kind of grand plan behind all of this, that Keith had suffered for some greater purpose, that he had ended up with Lance not as some sort of comical accident, but because it was meant to be.

But maybe trapping Keith the way he was doing was even more of a sin than loving him. After all, Jesus said to love thy neighbor as you love yourself, right? But he was pretty sure Jesus had had a bit of a problem with making others suffer for your personal gain.

Lotor had said that he was a man of God, and that was why he could heal Lance without consequences, and why he wanted to aid Lance in purifying himself of his demon. But it didn’t feel right. He’d known a lot of priests in his lifetime, and absolutely none of them had had the power to heal, not like that. His mother had always said that religion was to heal your _soul_ , not to heal your body.

His mother.

Always, when he felt doubt, she’d been there to comfort him. He was a bit scared of what she would say when she found out his predicament, but… he needed her right then. Keith was still sleeping, and Pidge, Matt #2, and Hunk… didn’t really know enough about God to tell him if what he was feeling was right or wrong.

Before he knew it, he was hitting his speed dial, praying that the time difference didn’t keep his mother from answering.

“Lancito, is everything alright?”

The sound of his mother’s voice sent a jolt of longing through him, rising out of his heart and spreading through his body until it filled the hollows of his throat.

“Mom, I feel so complicated.”

He heard his mother inhale sharply, and then there was the sound of a chair scraping against the kitchen floor as it was pulled out from under the table, the little thump as his mother sat down, like she always would when she would get phone calls that turned serious.

“What’s wrong, Mijo? I’m listening.”

Now that she was talking to him, Lance wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. Could he tell her everything? Accidentally summoning a demon, being kidnapped by an angel… no. She would demand he come home immediately. But then… what? The words were filling up his throat, stuck behind a wall of doubt.

“Mom, I… haven’t always been good about believing in God.”

“I know.”

“So, you know, sometimes I’ve done bad things. And I have to pray to make up for them, right?”

“Yes. Because God forgives.”

“But this time… I don’t know if I can fix it myself, just by praying. And I met someone who says that he’ll help me, but… I don’t trust him. I don’t know why. I wonder if I’m just being selfish, but… something in me says that if I trust this person, even if he can help, then someone I care about a lot is going to get hurt. But… what do _I_ know about God? Do I have the right to doubt someone for no reason, or is that cruel?”

He heard his mother shuffle in her seat, still keeping himself calm by running his fingers through Blue’s fur, feeling the rise and fall of her breath under his hands as she slept in a little doughnut-shape in his lap, her paws over her eyes. It kept him grounded, even if he felt he was drifting through the cosmos right now, waiting for the sound of his mother’s voice to tell him where he should go.

“Mijo… are you in love again?”

He laughed a bit to himself, even if it stung. “I don’t know if this is an ‘again,’ Mom. There’s nothing like this.”

“Lance… everyone has doubts sometimes. Even me. We suffer, and wonder why, if the Lord loves us so much, he gives us pain. But it’s because we learn from it, mijo. God gives us hunger and thirst and pain and broken hearts so that we learn how to heal ourselves, and others. God gives us gifts to help us along the way. Like your good aim, and your strong heart. And your intuition. I’ve only ever known you to be fooled by beautiful women. But you’ve always learned fast. That’s God’s gift to you. The best way to show your faith is to use that gift, not neglect it. If you cannot trust God, then trust yourself. Someday, you will find God that way.”

He closed his eyes, swallowing down the ache. “Thank you… Mom. I think I feel… a lot better now.”

“Lance… if you ever feel like you can’t handle it alone… just remember that you can always come home. I don’t know what it is you’re dealing with, but… we love you, too.”

“I love you, Mom. And tell my niece that I love her, too. Veronica, too.”

“What about your brothers?”

“...tell Luis that if he breaks anything in my room, he’s buying me a new one. Because I know he’s going in there all the time, even if I’m not home.”

His mom laughed a little, although she still sounded worried. “Is that everything, Lancito?”

“Oh, about the medals… have you sold any of them?”

“Of course not. They’re hanging up on the walls for everyone to see.”

He blushed a little. “ _Mom_ , it’s kind of embarrassing that way… but, um… forget what I said about selling them if you’re ever strapped for cash. I guess they’re not even real gold or silver…”

She laughed again. “Honey, everyone knows that.”

“What, am I the _only_ one who never knew?”

“We didn’t want to spoil it for you,” she answered sympathetically. “Oh, your father’s coming home from work. Do you want to talk to him?”

“Nah, mom, I’ve got to get going. To be honest, I’m sitting on the ground in the middle of the winter, and I can’t feel my butt anymore. So, bye-bye. I love you.”

“We love you, too, Lancito.”

~

Keith continued to sleep, as if Allura’s presence itself had sapped all of the energy from him. It was deep, too, so much that he wouldn’t even stir when Lance would enter the room, and certainly not enough to be able to eat anything. If he didn’t wake up soon, all of the food Lance had bought for Keith to eat would spoil.

Still, he made the best of things. He went to the church that Lotor had told him he belonged to, and sat and listened to the priest’s service before confronting Lotor.

“Ah, you’ve decided to accept my offer,” the exorcist chimed, his smile turning charming.

“No. I just wanted to say that I’ll be fine. All I have to do is make my wish, and Keith can return. But he doesn’t want to go back right now. I still don’t really know why, but I’m not going to make him do something he doesn’t want. So thank you for your offer, but I decline.”

He expected to see displeasure cross Lotor’s face, but was disappointed when instead, Lotor simply continued smiling, bowing his head a little. “I understand, of course. Exorcism may heal your demon, but, of course, your freedom is of the utmost importance. Do let me know if you change your mind.”

His face was totally unreadable, as always. But Lance’s mother had told him to trust his instincts, and that was what he was going to do. Although Lotor’s words still bugged him. They lined up too much with what Allura had said when she was begging Keith to return to the demon world, for his own sake. But… from what Lance remembered from Keith’s story, exorcism wasn’t pleasant. So Lotor was lying, right?

...right?

 

~Malthias~

It was a regular night at the Holt family’s house. Mom had made a great dinner, Dad was joking about how if space peas were mashed and then preserved, they’d make a goo of the perfect nutritional value to keep people alive for long periods. Pidge was explaining how her newest project was about “revealing things on a spectrum the human eye can’t see.” A fairly accurate, but understated description, Matt had to admit.

Occasionally, Dad-- uh, Professor Holt, would ask him something about robotics and programming, and Matt would kind of blank out, because, well, he wasn’t _actually_ Matt. The _real_ Matt would know these things. But although Matt #2 knew a lot about demonic alchemy, computer language was a little new to him.

He was catching up, though. Every day, when he had the house to himself because he was “on break from grad school for a while,” he would use the time to learn as much as he could from Pidge’s notes and computer about the kinds of things the real Matt would know, so that next time he wouldn’t be caught off-guard. Luckily, he was a fast learner.

This time, when Professor Holt asked him for a second opinion on whether there would be an issue with associative operation in his code, Matt was ready, and pointed out that although there were a few times that could have produced error, they actually worked out to the same result in the end, so it should work.

Professor Holt smiled proudly, and Matt felt proud of himself, before suddenly stabbed with guilt. He wasn’t the real Matthew Holt. He was just stealing his spot until he figured out what to do next.

The doorbell rang, and the buzz of conversation around the table faded into silence as everyone looked at the door.

It didn’t seem like anyone was willing to get up, so Matt and Pidge did rock-paper-scissors quickly to determine who would get the door. Matt lost, paper to scissors, so got to his feet and went to open the door.

“Lance?”

“Hey! Matt, I actually wanted to talk to you.”

“Me? Not Pidge?”

Lance peeked around Matt at the rest of the family, who were all watching out of curiosity.

Lance bit his lip. “Uh, well, it has to do with, uh… what you studied in Germany.”

Matt frowned for a moment, confused, and then the information clicked. “Oh. Ooohhhh. Yeah, no problem. Come on in.”

The Holt family all greeted Lance warmly, with Mom-- Colleen Holt-- offering to let him have some dessert.

“Aw, really?!”

He looked excited for a moment, but then shook his head. “Maybe later. I think I should talk to Matt first.”

She frowned, seeming to sense the same kind of misgivings from Lance that Matt could. “Well, alright, maybe you should take some home with you when you’re on your way out. Alright?”

Lance’s face brightened again, and he thanked her for always being so great, before turning to Matt. “Well… can we talk?”

“Yeah, sure, let’s go up to my room.”

He showed Lance upstairs, feeling a bit odd escorting the Prince’s master-slash-lover to his bedroom, though it was for no nefarious reason. Really what was odd about it was that it would be the perfect opportunity to just assassinate the boy, thus releasing Keith from his contract, and then being able to bring the prince back to Hell without much trouble. But… he couldn’t do that. Especially _because_ Lance was trusting him this much. He’d have to find some other way to bring Keith home. He just hadn’t been able to figure out how, yet.

“So… what’s wrong?” he asked, sitting down on his bed.

Lance sat in the desk chair, beginning to spin it in circles almost immediately, kicking out his feet and looking up at the ceiling. “What’s it like to be exorcised, as a demon?”

“Like, when a holy figure sends a demon back to Hell by force, severing its link with its master?”

“...yeah, that.”

“Not gonna lie, it’s… not great. Keith told you what it was like when he got exorcised, right?”

“He kind of… skimmed over it. But I got the idea that it wasn’t exactly fun.”

“Understatement. An exorcism is… one of the most painful things that can ever happen to a demon. Demonic contracts aren’t _meant_ to be severed without the death of either party. It’s just how it works. But some holy figures got it in their heads that the humans weren’t at fault and just needed to be ‘saved’ from the ‘clutches’ of ‘filthy demons,’” Matt explained, adding air quotes for emphasis.

“So they figured out a way to break the contract even though it’s not supposed to happen?” Lance asked, letting his leg hit the edge of the desk so that the chair’s spinning came to a sudden halt.

“Yeah.”

“But why’s it so painful? Aren’t demons _supposed_ to live in Hell? I mean… aren’t they weaker on Earth?”

Matt paused, wondering how he should proceed with this. “Well… see, the contract isn’t just… some kind of paper that you’re bound to legally. Demons and their masters are literally linked by blood.”

Lance blinked, suddenly looking like he was going to vomit, but Matt wasn’t sure if that was because of the surprise, or because he was dizzy. “And what does _that_ mean?”

“It means… part of Keith’s energy comes from _you_ , Lance. It’s probably part of the reason he’s so tired all of the time. You’re not exactly a weakling physically, but… magically you’re like someone who’s never run a mile in his life. It’s not exactly enough to feed someone as powerful as Keith is.”

“You mean… I really am holding him back? It’s not just in my head?”

Matt was starting to feel a little sick, himself. “It’s not your fault, Lance. But… Keith was summoned by your blood. He literally _has_ your blood in his veins. That’s how it works. It means if you’re in pain, he can feel it. And-- Lance?!”

Suddenly, the human boy had fallen out of the chair, curled into a tight ball and clenching his teeth so tightly Matt was sure he could hear them grinding together. A low whine was escaping his throat, and his heartbeat and body temperature had spiked.

“Lance?! Lance, what’s happening?!”

“God, it hurts… so bad…”

“What hurts?!”

Lance gasped, managing to open his eyes and yell, “EVERYTHING!”

 _Keith_.

Without thinking, Matt scooped Lance up and ran to the window, calling the moonlight to bring him to the demon prince before it was too late.

 

~Lance~

The pain was like nothing he’d ever felt before. It radiated out of his heart and coursed through every capillary of his blood vessels, millions of little red-hot needles of pain across his muscles, his skin, his bones. It grabbed at his skeleton and threatened to tear it apart at the cartilage. It blocked out all of his senses, even touch, so it seemed as if Matt was carrying someone else through the moonlight, not him.

He tried to pretend he was aiming an arrow, blocking out all distractions, including the pain, just like he’d ignored the pain in his fingertips before. Block out the pain. Concentrate. Focus only on the target.

He saw before him his bedroom window, and within it, a figure standing over his bed. A figure in long violet robes with a head of perfect white hair.

Matt went _through_ the glass of the window as if it wasn’t even there, shouting, “Demon, reveal thyself!” stretching out his hand and shooting beams of moonlight towards the figure, which wrapped him in silver and then spun away, taking bits of color with them.

The figure stepped back, and suddenly the pain subsided as if it had never been there. Lance felt like he could breathe again, sucking in deep lungfuls of air from where he’d collapsed on the floor after Matt had set him down, trying to look up at Lotor. Lotor, who had managed to find Keith. Lotor, who was exorcising Keith, whether Lance wanted him to or not.

Lotor, who suddenly had pale lavender skin and hooked canines in his mouth, his eyes glowing blue against the moonlight.

 _A demon._ But how?! Demons couldn’t use magic like the kind Lotor had used to heal Lance, not without a wish. Not without it becoming worse than it had been before.

Next to him, Lance heard Matt inhale sharply. “ _You_.”

Lotor’s face changed to a powerful, serene smile. “Hello, Malthias. It has been a long time.”

While the two demons faced off, Lance clambered to the bed, checking Keith for injuries. He was fine, sleeping peacefully, his breath coming out in even puffs that stirred his black hair. _How the HELL did he sleep through that if_ he _was the one getting exorcised?!_ Lance wondered, but turned quickly to address the problem at hand. Matt #2 looked angrier than Lance ever imagined Pidge’s brother possibly could, and he was standing protectively between Keith, Lance, and Lotor.

“What are you doing here, Lotor?” Matt asked through gritted teeth, his moonlight staff appearing in his hands.

“I’d think you should know. It was your idea to banish me on Earth, wasn’t it, Malthias?”

“I thought you were dead. For a thousand years, no one has even seen or heard of a demon named Lotor. How could you possibly…?”

Lotor continued smiling, stepping toward them. “Have you forgotten, Malthias, that I am what the angels called a ‘filthy half-breed?’ To be sure, demonic magic is easier to use, but… angelic magic is more permanent. And more practical.”

Lance’s heart stopped. _Angelic magic._ This guy was half angel?!

“Matt…” Lance attempted. “This guy… offered to exorcise Keith. But I told him not to. He said it was for Keith’s sake. But… you’re telling me you _know_ this guy?!”

Slowly, Matt nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off of Lotor. “He’s the son of Zarkon, the Demon King before Keith’s father. A man who did such atrocities… not even the demons could tolerate it. His Majesty asked the aid of the angels and overthrew Zarkon.”

“Yes, and punished his entire family and court for it," Lotor jeered. "All except for those who betrayed Zarkon and joined the prince's father, that is.”

Matt’s grip on his staff tightened. “What does it matter to you? I thought you hated your father, too.”

Before Lotor could answer, Lance heard coughing behind him, and turned quickly to Keith, who was waking up, holding a hand to his head.

“Keith! Are you alright?!”

“Yeah. Was Allura here again? I feel like somebody dumped me in holy water.”

But when he looked up and saw Lotor, his brows furrowed. “Who… are you?”

Lotor’s smile twitched a bit. “Good to see you well, my prince.”

“Shut up,” Lance growled, wishing his bow weren’t behind Lotor, because if he had enough time to grab it and pull it out of its case, he would 100% shoot the purple-skinned dude, no questions asked.

“He _wouldn’t_ remember me, would he?” Lotor commented, sounding put off by this realization. “He wasn’t born until after it all happened. And yet his marriage to Allura is going to solve all of the problems. I hope, for your sake, Prince, that it’s true.”

Matt seemed to have heard enough, because he launched forward, pinning Lotor by the neck against the wall with the point of his staff, sizzling where it dug into Lotor’s skin. “We had _mercy_ on you. We should have killed you back then.”

“And I thank you for that. Honestly. But surely you can’t expect me to enjoy my exile?” Lotor piped up, looking serene as ever. “I was born in Heaven. Did you know that? I _remember_ what it’s like to live in heaven, Malthias. The sunlight is so warm, unlike anything here on Earth. And there is no hunger, no pain, no suffering. But the angels could not tolerate me any more than they could tolerate my father and the others who rebelled against Heaven and became the first demons. It drove my mother mad.”

Lance inhaled sharply, remembering what his mom had told him once, when he’d been bragging to his sister, Veronica, that he was prettier than she was. _“Lucifer was once the most beautiful angel of all, Lancito. Before he rebelled against God and all the other angels. And so God cast him out and sent him to Hell, where he became the first demon.”_

The thought made him shiver. It made him think of Keith, climbing out of the summoning circle with his beautiful, wide black wings. It made him think of the gargoyles, who had used hundreds of lesser demons in their attempt to eat Keith, despite having been summoned by members of _churches_. It made him think plenty of things he’d been trying not to think about.

“I see understanding in the human’s face,” Lotor commented with a hint of amusement in his voice. “You are no fool, Lance. I believed that from the moment I met you. You understand what I am doing, don’t you? I apologize for my actions, but… I simply wish to go home. If Keith’s marriage to Princess Allura can truly make it so there is peace between our peoples, then… I wish it more than anything. So that all demons can taste the air of Heaven again. You know what it’s like, don’t you, Lance? To miss your home?”

Lance swallowed down the memory of the ache he had felt upon hearing his mother’s voice through the phone earlier that day. Memories of the warm sun, the gentle waves, the moonlight on the ocean. It hurt. It had always hurt.

“You tried to exorcise Keith,” was all he replied.

“I’m doing what’s best for everyone, if you won’t do it yourself. And Malthias, too. I suppose you were here to retrieve the prince, but couldn’t bear to do so? You always were far too soft, Malthias.”

“I could kill you right now,” Matt growled, pressing his staff tighter to Lotor’s throat. “You might have some angelic magic, but you’re still as much a demon as the rest of us. You’ve spent more time on Earth than I have. You’re weak, Lotor.”

“Malthias, let him go.”

Lance blinked and looked at Keith, who was staring fixedly at Lotor’s face, his expression unreadable.

“Keith, this man is likely the one who sent those demons to kill you. That’s how you’ve survived this long, isn’t it? You convince lesser demons to gather the emotions of humans, and then feed on it yourself?”

Lotor didn’t answer, which probably meant it was true.

“I know, Matt. Let him go.”

Matt clearly didn’t want to, but eventually yanked his staff back, allowing Lotor to quickly suck in deep lungfuls of air.

“I thank you deeply, Prince Keith. Now, if you’d ask your master to make his wish, we can both go back to the demon world…”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Lotor. I’m furious that you tried to _exorcise me_ , even though… for some reason I didn’t feel any of it. But… I understand you. I… miss home, too. I know that the angels still look down on demons. That our weakness on Earth is punishment the angels of old gave us. You’re right. That’s the only reason.”

Lotor looked up at him with hope. “So you’ll return to the demon world? Marry the princess? Settle this once and for all?”

Keith’s expression turned unreadable. “No.”

“But _why_?”

“That’s my business. Now hurry up and get out of here before I either let Malthias kill you or do it myself.”

Again, Lotor’s expression hardened. “Fine. But remember this, Prince: every contract has its loopholes.”

And then he faded into a cloud of lavender fog that poured out through the window and disappeared into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll admit, I'm not an expert on Christianity or any of the Abrahamic religions. I started reading the Bible over winter break, but had to stop because I didn't want to take it with me while I studied abroad in Japan. It's too big. :P  
> But considering the subject material, I thought it would be a little bit silly to not bring a little bit more of religion into the picture, especially considering that I've mentioned before in this story that Lance's mother is religious. But... A LOT happened in this chapter, right?  
> Stay tuned for next chapter, where you find the real reason the rating is listed as Teen and Up audiences. ;)
> 
> Oh! And if you ever want to chat, hit me up at my Tumblr. My username's elfenphoenix, same as here. :)


	11. Captivated

~Allura~

In Heaven, the angels were growing impatient, irritated. They did not show it easily, did not scream and grow violent, throwing their complaints at the feet of the Angel King, or rioting in the streets, the way demons would-- they were far too proud for that. Instead, the impatience of angels took the form of a kind of humidity that would hang unseen across all of Heaven, invisible to the eye but oppressively heavy, so much so that it became difficult to sleep, to eat, to breathe comfortably.

She could sense that they were irritated that Keith remained elusive, despite being weakened so much that “it would practically be an embarrassment to let our princess marry him,” a comment she had heard whispered just before she entered a room. They grew tired of the wedding being postponed, the many preparations to be made delayed so long that the people were viewing their projects for it more as side hobbies than their primary jobs. They disliked that demons as powerful as Malthias and Keith had been allowed to roam free on Earth, while King Alfor had refused to allow angelic interference of any large scale.

They would never say any of this directly, however. It was not their way. To complain outright was not angelic at all, and so they would merely let their dissatisfaction hang in the air, waiting for the King to sense it.

In times like these, Allura often missed the straightforward nature of demons. They were often rude, sometimes vulgar, to be sure, but at least she could almost always tell exactly with what they took issue, without having to resort to practically reading their minds. It was a relief, sometimes, from the stiff politics back home.

Today, even the human world was able to provide her that same kind of relief. Normally, the human world was even more chaotic than even Heaven or Hell, with its many conflicting or warring countries, its hundreds of different polities to be organized,  and even governments within governments, communities within communities, all of which had their own individuality and thus conflicted with each other. This chaos was only natural, since the human world was intended to be the place where good and evil would constantly be at balance, but it was chaotic nonetheless. But today, the wind under her wings was gentle, the sunlight was warm, and it seemed as if the city Keith had decided to make his home on Earth was still sleeping.

The air was clear and easy to breathe, and as she flew she let it wash over her, blowing freely through her hair. She felt light as a feather in this air, especially since she had decided to forego her battle armor today-- she had not come here to fight.

She simply knew that this kind of tension could not remain in heaven forever, and so she would have to ask Malthias what his plan was, to bring Keith back to the human world. She felt embarrassed at having ran away like she had before, but she’d been so… shocked. Keith’s refusal to come home by itself wasn’t so surprising, but… that he had done so against Shiro’s wishes was. That he had come to save a human’s life, was. That he hadn’t killed the human in the first place… that was a surprise, too. But that he had fallen in love with one? It was as strange an idea to her as falling in love with Keith herself. It was just something she had come to understand and accept as an impossibility.

She alighted, knowing that Malthias would be in one of the residences nearby, with the family he had ingrained himself happily into. But what would he do when the _real_ Matt Holt came home? She wanted to ask him that, too, when she saw him.

As she stepped forward, she found herself wrapped in a cloud of lavender fog that billowed around her, before it coalesced in front of her, taking the shape of a young man. No-- a young demon.

She immediately summoned her whip into her hand. “Lotor?! I believed you were dead!”

“Yes, that is a popular sentiment these days. Please, Princess, do not be alarmed. I am here to help you. As an act of… good faith.”

She kept her grip tight on the handle of her whip. “Why should I trust that?”

“You want to return Keith to the demon world, yes? So you can unite Heaven and Hell again?”

“...yes.”

“Then we have something in common.”

“And?”

“If you truly want him back, despite his attachment to his human master, I do know a way. But in order to achieve it, I am going to need your help, and you will need mine.” He smiled wryly. “Well?”

Allura bit the inside of her lip, but nodded slowly. “I’m listening.”

 

~Keith~

The experience with Lotor had been enough to wake up Keith pretty damn quickly, to put it mildly. Calming down Matt, getting him to bring Lance back to the Holt’s house long enough to grab the dessert Colleen Holt had offered him (so they wouldn’t be curious about how Lance could go upstairs and then disappear), and then calming _Lance_ down after he’d gotten back and Matt had left… it left him feeling like he’d never want to sleep for another hundred years.

The worst thing had been the expression on Lance’s face when Keith had first woken up. The panic, the concern, as he’d searched Keith for injuries that weren’t there. But what sickened him most was the pain in Lance’s eyes. Physically, the boy Keith loved looked fine, but there was something in his eyes that made it seem as if he had aged rapidly, experienced something he never, ever should have.

He tried to force himself to relax, now that Lance was home, he was safe, and they were sitting next to each other on Lance’s bed, like always, leaning against each other for warmth. He listened attentively as Lance explained all that had happened since Keith had fallen asleep, from his first encounter with Lotor, to realizing that Lotor had tried to exorcise Keith against Lance’s wishes.

For the first time, Keith interrupted. “But… if Lotor was exorcising me, why didn’t I feel anything? How did you know I was even in trouble?”

“Because I could _feel_ it, Keith. It was like…” Lance shuddered, closing his eyes against the memory. “It was like every injury you could ever imagine getting, all at once. I felt like I was getting crushed and torn apart at the same time, frozen and burned all at once."

Keith sat up quickly, his mind racing. “Fuck, that really is what exorcism feels like… But how? How could you feel it _for_ me?! I wouldn’t wish that kind of thing on anyone, least of all you. And after feeling that kind of pain, why would you be worried more about _me_?!”

Lance shrugged, running his finger along Keith’s shoulder blades in a manner that was most likely intended to look nonchalant, but Keith knew was one of Lance’s ways of keeping himself grounded, of having just that little bit of reassurance that he was not alone. It was one of Lance’s nervous “ticks” that he loved.

“Because I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt like that? _Especially_ since this wouldn’t be the first time for you. If no one deserves to feel that _ever_ , then you _definitely_ don’t deserve to feel it twice. I was terrified that you’d have to suffer again.”

“But why?”

Lance looked puzzled, tilting his head to the side as he looked at Keith’s face in the moonlight pouring through the window. “Isn’t it obvious?” The hand running over Keith’s shoulders slid up his neck and to his chin as Lance answered his own question: “It’s because I’m in love with you, idiot.”

And then Lance kissed him.

He wasn’t sure why that made him so happy. He’d kissed Lance dozens of times before, and Lance had never tried to push him away. But this was the first time Lance had kissed _him_ , and he felt… relieved? As if maybe, somewhere deep, he’d been worried that just because Lance wasn’t pushing him away, didn’t mean that he really felt the same way Keith did.

 _Because I’m in love with you_.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything in this world had an answer that simple?

 

~Coran~

Coran had a feeling that Princess Allura hadn’t had the chance to feel happiness in quite a long time. _Real_ happiness, that is, not momentary bits of relief from the constant stress of the life she lived. Her dedication to the safety and happiness of her people was commendable, but sometimes he wished she would think of herself. And he had a feeling he wasn’t the only one who thought that way.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about this whole ordeal with Keith. He’d definitely been annoyed at Keith for running away at first-- after all, how could anyone _possibly_ reject Allura?! But after first finding out that Malthias had tried and failed to bring Keith back, due to the moral strength of his human master, and then seeing the shock and confusion on Allura’s face after she’d returned to heaven… he felt as if this was more than Keith just rejecting his marriage with the princess.

He didn’t like that this upset Allura as much as it had, and he most certainly didn’t like the plan she had recently gotten involved in so as to finally capture Keith. It didn’t feel very good to him, nor very angelic. But what did he know? He was no angelic hero, or a warrior. He was an advisor, a counsel, an attendant. He would advise as much as he could, comfort, console, consider, but in the end, it was all up to the King and the Princess. He could only trust that they were as wise as he believed them to be.

But he did as was expected of him, preparing the tools that Allura would need, arranging the meetings, getting the rest of the angels to focus on the wedding ceremony again. It was tiring work, especially since he didn’t want to worry Alfor with this ordeal more than he already was… but he still felt uncomfortable with this.

For a moment, he glanced up at the shimmering white-gold walls of the heavenly palace and remembered them covered in paintings that the Royal Trio had done before he’d caught them, getting them stuck in etiquette lessons for hours as punishment while the walls were cleaned.

He paused, reminiscing fondly. He’d been the one to dub Allura, Shiro, and Keith the “Royal Trio,” because they were always together. Shiro, the oldest, and Heir Apparent to the demonic throne, and his younger brother, Keith, with Angel Princess Allura between them. They were always together. Always, whether it was training, or getting in trouble, or playing in the gardens.

He tapped his hand on the wall and images began to play across them, direct memories from his mind. Angels had no need for photographs-- their memories were perfect-- but there was something more emotional about seeing a memory playing again in front of your eyes. Allura and Shiro chasing after baby Keith, who was trying to catch the tiger of Eden by its tail. The three of them building castles out of golden sand, Keith’s looking the best, although he still looked unsatisfied with it, even as Shiro and Allura looked on proudly. And then training, as they got older, Allura taking on both Shiro and Keith at once in unarmed combat, until both of them eventually learned how to channel their powers constructively. Allura taking over Guardian-Angel duty for a while when the respective angel was out on maternity leave, the two demon princes watching over her shoulder and giving terrible advice, before all three of them had fallen asleep, Allura leaning on Shiro’s shoulder.

Coran frowned, skimming again over the images. In all of them, he felt as if he was seeing something he’d never noticed before: he’d always thought of them as a perfect trio, but there was something not quite right about it. Keith was always just a bit further aside. Not as if he wasn’t being included, but he was always just a bit separate, just a little bit further away, while both Allura and Shiro watched him together, or chased him together, or chastised him together. He was with them, but… not in the same way, it seemed, that Shiro and Allura had always been together.

He tapped the wall again, and the images vanished. He went back to his tasks, carefully polishing the sconces that held the colorful demon-fires that had been a present from Shiro to Allura on her 100th birthday. She’d still been a child, watching with wonder as the fires continually changed color. Even after she’d grown older, when she’d frowned more often and rested less, she’d sometimes just come and sit in front of the sconce, watching the fire change colors, her head on her knees. The fire had always helped her relax, in the same way that Shiro had always helped her relax.

Not so, with Keith. He had always felt, to Coran, more like someone Allura felt she had to look after, even more since he’d first been summoned, at the age approximate to human adolescence. Angels and demons both stopped aging whenever they chose, once they found an appearance that suited them best, but it didn’t seem as if Keith had settled himself yet, unlike the other two.

Coran sighed, setting the cover back on the sconce. He knew what Keith was trying to do. To be honest, he’d known it in the back of his mind for a long time, even since before the wedding had even been announced. But he was sure that even if he said it himself, it wouldn’t change anything. It was something those children needed to figure out for themselves, before they made mistakes they would never be able to recover from. He only hoped that this human that Keith had fallen in love with… would be the final puzzle piece necessary to put the Royal Trio back together.

But in the meantime, they had a war to prevent.

 

~Keith~

Months had passed since he had first come to the human world, and his seemingly-endless cycle of combat and exhaustion seemed as if it was finally coming to an end. Actually, he felt stronger than ever after Lotor had tried to exorcise him, weirdly enough. It was gradual, but over the past few weeks since then, he’d been steadily recovering, to the point where he wasn’t much more tired than Lance or Pidge were on the average day.

His life was starting to settle into a steady rhythm, occasionally deterring any demonic attacks, or feeble attempts from Malthias to trick him into returning to the Demon world on his own. Not that he really felt like Malthias was trying very hard. He was fairly sure that “Matt” had started to settle comfortably into his human life, too. But Malthias hadn’t been weakened like Keith had been in the first place, so it made sense that he was still strong. But Keith’s source of rejuvenation was… what, exactly?

Most demons, after their connection to Hell had worn out, satisfied themselves by feeding on human negativity, which they were experts in cultivating. But Keith hadn’t done anything of the sort since coming into the human world. Well, occasionally he hadn’t been able to help himself when the spring semester had started and the university had filled up with exhausted, depressed, nihilistic college students, most of whom were members of the age group Lance referred to as “Millennials.”

But he’d been feeding on their energy this entire time, and it had never been enough, so where was this sudden spike coming from?

Well, whatever the cause, it made him much better able to enjoy the time he spent on Earth, whether it was watching Pidge and Hunk give a presentation on their current robotics project to an awards committee (They won, and were expected to repeat the presentation on the national stage in a month), or supporting Lance at his archery competitions. He had offered plenty of times to curse the competition, but Lance had always turned him down, insisting that it wouldn't be a real victory that way. Only once had he done it anyway, but not because Keith believed he posed any kind of real threat to Lance as a competitor. Actually it was because he had said some unsavory things about the fact that Lance was from Cuba, and so Keith made sure he received an appropriately unsavory punishment. Something having to do with the sewage system in the bathroom.

The magic drained him, but not so much as it used to, and he was free to watch as his boyfriend focused on his goal, already making his way toward the National Archery Championships. Lance was unstoppable recently, to the point that Keith wondered whether Lotor had done something _else_ to him when he’d healed Lance’s fingertips.

Lance won the competition handily, and was filled with a kind of infectious energy the rest of the day that drove Keith absolutely insane. In a good way.

Even when they were back in Lance’s room, while his roommates were out for the night nursing their losses, Lance was buzzing with confidence, humming along happily while he did his homework, and Keith did his, since he was actually attending classes now, after having finally gotten around to crafting his false identity. But he wasn’t really concentrating on the chapter on World War 1 (It was mostly inaccurate, anyway), instead watching Lance out of the corner of his eyes, listening to the rise and fall of his voice as he hummed and sang to the words playing through his headphones, pretending he wasn’t watching with fascination whenever Lance got up to go grab something, every movement turning a bit into a dance.

“Hey, Keith, you feeling okay?” he asked suddenly, pulling his earbuds out of his ears.

Keith looked up quizzically. “I feel better than ever. Why?”

“I dunno, it’s just usually you’re kinda… sleepy all the time. Did something happen?”

Keith shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Lance sat down on the bed next to him, wrapping his arm around Keith’s back immediately, his fingers still tapping out little tunes against the skin of Keith’s side, even though there was no music playing. “Because today, I noticed something weird, y’know? I can see demons without the Demon Revealer, and I don’t even know when that happened.”

Keith stiffened, the beginnings of a realization tickling at his mind. “Wait… what?”

“And… when you were being exorcised and you didn’t feel it, but I did, I started to think… maybe you didn’t feel it because I felt it _for_ you, you know? Is… that possible?”

Keith’s mind was beginning to spin. “Where is this coming from, all of a sudden?”

“Well… today at the meet, before the actual competition… I was doing practice shots without any actual arrows in the bow. Well, not actually shooting, just testing the string and letting it relax, you know?”

“Okay…?”

"And then I saw Blue, who you know I love, but as I was doing another practice tug, I noticed a little goblin pestering her. And then... before I knew it, I just... let go. Which, you know, normally would be terrifying because I don't want to break it, but... instead of the bow cracking, the goblin got knocked back as if I had  _actually_ shot it, staring at me in shock, and then it burst into dust. I've  _never_ done that before."

 _Click_.

“Lance… you can use magic.”

“...what?”

“That’s it, that’s why I’ve been getting stronger. It’s because _you have_.”

Lance jumped up, his eyes taking up half the size of his face. “Wait, wait, wait, _me_ , have _magic?!_ Since when?! Matt said that… you’re weak because of me, because I don’t have training in magic, yet you’re tied to me.”

“Magic is a skill just like anything else. Sure, everyone has different starting talent, but… just like your archery, the more you do it, watch it, are exposed to it, the more it shapes you. Lance… you… and Hunk and Pidge too, probably… you’re developing magic because of me and Malthias. Because you’re spending so much time fighting and learning about demons and angels.”

“There’s only really one demon I want to learn more about, inside and out,” Lance answered, with a little wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Lance, this is no time for flirting,” Keith scoffed, even though he could feel his cheeks warming a bit. “You… because I feel… things for you, your bond with me is much stronger than it’s supposed to be. That’s probably why you’re developing powers, and why you felt my exorcism in my place.”

“You feel… _things_ for me?”

“You _know_ what I mean.”

“Aw, come on, I said it out loud, so you have to, too.”

The words caught in Keith’s throat. “I--”

To be honest, he was much better with actions than with words. He felt like something as simple as Lance’s “I’m in love with you, idiot,” would sound ridiculous coming from him. But he didn’t know what he should say. Finally, he just blurted out:

“You know, there are a lot of demons who specialize in seducing humans? Succubi, Incubi… it’s how they get power from their masters before killing them. But… I’ve never known a human to seduce a demon.”

Lance raised an eyebrow in an expression that was doing dangerous things to Keith’s nervous system. “Oh, did I _seduce_ you?”

“Maybe seduced isn’t the right word,” Keith corrected quickly, but his heart was hammering.

“I can try it, if you want,” Lance purred, leaning towards him, his eyelashes casting shadows over his face from the lamp overhead, his back a perfect curve away from Keith, his voice soft and warm and as tender as a caress, a caress that every muscle in Keith’s body wanted to make into a reality.

“Lance, don’t be ridiculous--”

“--what does it take to seduce a demon prince, hmmm?” Lance asked, straightening up and moving around the room, his body still somehow moving to a nonexistent beat, as if the music were inside Lance’s body itself, and Keith was dying to hear.

“I like watching you dance,” he heard himself say, before he even realized he was doing so. He quickly clapped his hand over his mouth, but it was too late. Lance had heard it, and was now watching him with interest.

“Oh? Have I danced in front of you?”

Keith’s face was probably getting as red as the tips of his wings right about now. “Not… exactly.”

“I was on the dance team in high school, you know,” Lance was saying, stretching his arms over his head so that his shirt rose up and exposed a little bit of tummy. And his _voice…_ Keith was sure he was doing this on purpose. “Had to quit when I broke my knee in a track accident, but…” he pulled out his phone and began flicking through it, looking for the right song. Finally he settled on one, and his gaze slid back to Keith as he grinned wickedly. “I can still do some things.”

The beat started playing, and Keith felt the urge to laugh and roll his eyes at the same time. “Havana? You’re so typical.”

Not that the way Lance was rolling his hips to the beat wasn’t working for him, completely unbothered by Keith’s comment, just grinning at him and dancing around the room, perfectly on beat, unafraid to use the furniture as props for stretching his long legs in a way that was absolutely unfair. Nor was it fair when he lifted a finger to say, _come dance with me_ , and Keith knew he was getting too excited.

He shook his head, but Lance was merciless, sidling over to him on time with the music and sliding his hands over Keith’s shoulders, down his arms to his hands, slipping his fingers into Keith’s and gently pulling him to his feet, as if he could possibly resist. And then there they were, in the climax of the song, with Lance guiding Keith’s hips with the hand he kept on Keith’s lower back, guiding him to dance in the same way that Lance did, something odd and unfamiliar to Keith, who had never been taught to dance this way before, with his hips rolling against the boy behind him, feeling the texture of his jeans, the warmth of Lance’s skin where his hand brushed him.

Lance let go of his back, and with the hand he was holding, pulled Keith into a spin so that when he returned, they were facing each other, still dancing, and both breathing a little harder than the difficulty of the dance should have required.

Even before the song was over, Keith was feeling overwhelmed, giving up on even trying to dance and pushing Lance up against the wall, twisting his hands into Lance’s T-shirt and kissing him so deeply he felt as if he could breathe him in. And kissing, and kissing, and Lance’s hands wandering over his back, one tangling in his hair, the other hooking in Keith’s belt just above his ass, as Keith let go of his grip to slide his hands down Lance’s chest and under the fabric of his t-shirt, feeling the smooth muscle underneath, and kissing him again and again, and thinking very, very demonic thoughts.

At some point, he thought he whispered, “consider me seduced” as he hooked his fingers in the button of Lance’s jeans and yanked, before going in for another kiss, sliding down the floor in a messy, desperate heap, trying to hold himself back, but every time he’d pull away Lance would tease him with a little nibble at his lips that turned him on even more, and he knew for certain that humans were much more dangerous than demons or angels ever could be.

The bedroom door swung open and Lance’s roommate, Charlie, strolled in, talking the whole way.

“Hey, Lance? Can I borrow your shampoo? Mine’s emp- HOLY SHIT.”

He took one glance at Keith with one hand up Lance’s shirt and the other in the process of pulling down his pants, froze, looked between the two of them, and then squeaked something approximating “sorryIintrudedIshould’veknockedsorryohmygod,” and promptly ran from the room.

Unfortunately, the mood was ruined. Lance’s face was bright red, and Keith was pretty sure his was, too. They jerked apart, Lance wiping saliva from his mouth (his or Keith’s, who knew?), and Keith couldn’t help but feel extremely, _extremely_ sour.

“Uh, um, I, um, maybe I’ll just…” Lance was sputtering, making jerking motions toward various objects in his room like a malfunctioning robotic puppet.

“Uh… maybe I should go…” Keith said, in a voice loud enough that he knew Charlie would be able to hear.

“I’m sorry, I really thought they wouldn’t be back for hours yet,” Lance whispered. The guilt and embarrassment and frustration on his face were more than enough for Keith to believe him.

He didn’t blame Lance. Not at all. But he still felt incredibly sour.

Quickly, he grabbed his jacket and hurried out the bedroom and out of the apartment, rushing quickly out of sight so that he could get safely into the night air.

 

~Lance~

He didn’t want Keith to go. He didn’t like that frustrated expression on Keith’s face, mostly because he felt guilty for being the one to instigate the whole thing, only for his roommate to interrupt.

He followed Keith to the bedroom door, then watched Charlie’s eyes follow the back of Keith’s jacket as he practically ran out of the apartment, both of them frozen in silence long after the door had slammed shut.

“So…”

Charlie let the word drag out, staring at Lance as if the end of the sentence should be obvious to him. It wasn’t. There were a thousand things Charlie could be asking him. Though Lance had a feeling he knew their general direction.

“What?”

“You… like dudes?”

Lance sighed. “I’m _bi_ , dude. I thought we figured this out.”

Charlie stood there awkwardly, the empty shampoo bottle still in his hand. “You were always flirting with girls, so we just thought you were, you know… straight. One of those allies, y’know?”

“Did you NOT catch all of the ‘bi’ jokes?!” Lance asked.

“What jokes?”

“‘I’m getting bi?!’ ‘I can’t be straight with you but I’m right BI your side?!’ NEVER?! Charlie, I thought I made it _so_ obvious!”

Charlie shrugged. “We just didn’t want to think about it, I guess.” He continued standing there, awkward silence falling again. “Oh, but, uh… we’re still cool, y’know. You’re the best archer on the team. Even if, you know, you’re banging the sword dude.”

“I did _not_ bang him.”

“Yooouuu were going to.”

“And whose fault is it that I _didn’t?!_ ”

“Okay, okay, fine! Just remember the lei next time, okay?! And, uh… when the rest of the guys get back… can you tell them, too? So they aren’t surprised?” He paused. “Though… actually, I think Danny said something about you and Keith when you first brought him home… so I think he might know already. At least Nick, then.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lance sighed. “So we’re cool?”

“We’re cool. Just don’t, like, watch me shower or anything.”

Lance decided to ignore that little micro-aggression, since they’d showered together for years without it ever being a problem. “I don’t plan on it. And _yes,_  you can use my shampoo.”

 

~Keith~

The chill of the spring night air was a relief to the burning heat in Keith’s cheeks. He didn’t really have anywhere to _go_ , but he hadn’t been able to stand the idea of staying in that apartment with Lance’s roommate for another second. Although he still had to deal with a little unsatisfied _problem_ in his pants now, thanks to Charlie. Fortunately, being inhuman, it wouldn’t be a problem for long. He just had to stay out of sight. So… glamour himself.

After he was safely protected from human eyes (except, apparently, Lance’s, Pidge’s, and Hunk’s), he continued down the paved walkway, which was thankfully pretty much empty thanks to the time of night. The moonlight was pretty, turning the empty branches of the trees lining the path to molten silver. It wouldn’t be long before they opened their blossoms, Keith could tell from the little bits of pink-white poking out of the buds. Plum trees, he was pretty sure Lance had told him once. Or maybe it was Hunk? Either way.

He heard a soft meow and looked around, trying to find the source, when Red came strolling out to him from the shadows, rubbing against his leg and purring. Keith sat down on the ground, starting to feel a bit relaxed thanks to the cat’s presence. Red wasn’t as soft as Blue, but he was sleek and shiny, and quite a beautiful cat in his own way. And Keith had a feeling he actually didn’t hate Lance as much as Lance thought-- he was just too proud to admit it.

Red froze, staring off into the shadows intently, Keith suddenly forgotten.

“What? What’s wrong, Red?” Keith asked the cat. Even with his enhanced vision he could see nothing out of the ordinary.

Red hissed, his back arching, and he backed up tighter to Keith. Quickly, Keith got to his feet, reaching for his hunting knife before realizing that, in his hurry to get out of the apartment, he’d forgotten the knife on Lance’s dresser. Like an _idiot_.

Lavender fog began to coalesce around him, and Keith lashed out with magic, trying to land a hit before he received one, but nothing connected. Red yowled, and then darted off into the night, as the lavender fog thickened. And then a flash of white in front of him, blinding against the night darkness. A portal? An _angelic_ portal?!

His arms were being twisted behind him, and then a knife pressed against the skin of his wrists. A slash, a sting of pain, and his blood began to run out of him, dripping down his hands and onto the ground, glowing rustily in the fog-dimmed moonlight.

“What in the--?!”

“Hell, yes,” Lotor’s voice said at his ear. “That is where I’m taking you. Thanks to the princess’ help, of course.”

Before Keith could shout a spell, or break free of the grip, or anything, he was getting pushed forward, into the glowing white wall of the angelic portal. And then he was tumbling, tumbling down into a world that was dismally familiar to him, with glittering night-fires and shimmering diamond flowers.

He was home. But this time, he was a captive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know "Havana" sounds like I'm being unoriginal, but it really did have just the kind of slower beginning, moving to more pop-y tune that I was trying to imagine as I wrote this story. I seriously spent like an hour trying to think of the perfect song, before I finally caved. Lance is a little bit basic anyway lol.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Or, well, most of it. :P  
> *Edit: the motivation for Lance drawing his bow, thanks to an explanation of archery physics by @goddesslittleowl


	12. The Obsidian Blade

~Allura: a few hours before~

She wished she didn’t have to do this.

She didn’t trust Lotor any more than anyone did, but she really felt as if she didn’t have a choice. In Hell, revolts in the Northern Pits were driving more and more demons to flee to the human realm the moment they had the chance, causing many angels to react with barely disguised outrage at the demonic invasion of the world they protected.

If something was not done soon, it would result in wholesale slaughter. Again.

How many times in human history had conflict like this bubbled up, boiling over Heaven and Hell and flooding the human world with chaos and bloodshed? Countless.

The Crusades, Civil Wars, the World Wars… and those were just the ones that she had lived through.

She knew that the discord in the demon world was mostly being caused by former servants of Zarkon, demonic families who had profited deeply from Zarkon’s strong-handed rule, and truly believed that Hell was better off without sympathy for the weak. They desired war with the angels again because the loss of life it generated gave them more power. If they had their way, there would never be an end to war. Unfortunately, their loyalties had been subtle enough that, even if Allura and Shiro’s fathers had suspected them of treachery, there was no way to prove it.

And so they’d remained with enough power to spread rumors about Shiro’s unsuitability for the throne, that he was too weak, too soft to control his own brother. And only a strong leader had the right to rule Hell.

She was doing this to help him, maybe even to save him, she kept reminding herself. And it was the only way to save Keith in the process, hurting him as little as possible. The only other alternative would be to kill his human master, but she knew already that that was something he would never, ever forgive her for.

All in all, the sword in her hands was a much better option.

Daylight still poured through the windows of the room that belonged to Keith’s human master, Lance, when she phased herself through the walls and into the space, glancing around at the decoration.

Archery medals, trophies, scholarship certificates. A messy bed. A desk scattered with papers, books, notebooks, pens, pencils, and a forgotten cup of half-finished coffee. Photographs stuck to the walls.

Despite the intimately human feel of the place, she could sense Keith’s energy from everything in it. She could feel the warmth of the emotions with which he stayed in that place, and knew that he felt comfortable there.

She swallowed, looking down at her reflection in the shining glass surface of the black blade in her hands. She had only just retrieved it from Keith’s room in the Royal Palace of Hell, having to disguise her motives with a visit to Shiro. Even that had been dangerous, with the tension in the air. As it stood, the demons had no proof of reason to hate her, but she did not know how long that would last. For the first time in a very, very long time, she had not felt safe in the demon realm, not even at Shiro’s side.

Carefully, she tucked the obsidian sword into a hidden corner of the room, just behind the human’s large fake-wooden wardrobe, so that its black-glass surface would not catch the light and thus the human-- or Keith’s-- attention, once they returned.

But its presence was necessary, or else none of this would work.

This, and the opening of the portal were her only duties. She could do what no demon could, go where no demon could go.

Such was the privilege of angels.

 

~Shiro~

He had to admit, he’d been starting to get desperate before Lotor had shown up at his door, with an unconscious Keith in his arms.

The war had already started. In the past two months, he had already been forced to send out troops to quell outright rebellions happening in the Northen Pits, resulting in a loss of life he would have much rather avoided. And he had to watch his own back quite often these days, too. He had already deflected two assassination attempts, and those were just the ones who had made it past the guards.

So you couldn’t blame him for being extremely disturbed at the sight of Lotor.

The palace had erupted into chaos from the exile’s sudden arrival. The servants had shrieked at the blood running from Keith’s wrists, but were too terrified of the former prince to do anything about it until Shiro commanded that Keith be taken to Lucifer’s Tower, where his wounds would be treated. But also where he would be put under guard and not allowed to escape.

Not that Shiro _wanted_ to treat his brother like a prisoner. But he was in a bit of a delicate situation, here. Most demons saw Keith as the cause of the current tension, and many would point to any leniency that Shiro showed his brother as a sign that the royal family only cared for itself. They would be all too happy to have a reason to trick the public into revolution.

Quickly, the servants had bustled Keith away, giving suspicious looks to Lotor, already fussing over Keith’s wounds, commenting that they weren’t healing properly, that they might need some magic… Shiro almost smiled, watching their fussing, because it reminded him of younger days, when Keith was always getting in fights, and the palace staff had always had their hands busy healing his injuries, or at least cleaning and repairing his ruined clothes after his rapid healing factor recovered his injuries.

Unfortunately, this left him with only Lotor to confront, and very few courtiers left entirely on his side.

Murmurs filled the room, mixing in echoes around the black granite and obsidian space and brushing against Shiro’s skin.

_Lotor._

_The former prince?_

_He’s returned!_

_I thought he was exiled to the human world? How can he be here?!_

_How did he catch Prince Keith?_

_Do you think he’s going to try to take the throne back?_

Shiro got to his feet, and the whispering fell into curious, nervous silence, as all waited for him to greet the visitor.

“Prince Lotor, what is the meaning of this?” Shiro demanded, trying his best to sound strict and formal, like his father had taught him.

“I merely wished to aid you in your trouble, Demon King,” Lotor answered, his face impassive. “I heard that your brother was causing trouble by running away to the human world. Conveniently, thanks to my exile, I was in the human world, and able to retrieve him for you. Is that not what you wished?”

Internally, Shiro winced, but he was so practiced at hiding his reactions that he was certain that none of it showed on the outside. “You’re not one of my subjects, Lotor. But I thank you for returning my brother to me. Although I suppose you didn’t do it for free?” This time, he didn’t even try to hide the suspicion in his voice. He doubted it wasn’t anything the gathered courtiers didn’t already know.

Lotor’s lips stretched into a polite, but pleased smile. “Of course, I would not think of making demands of the Demon King. But I had hoped, that such an act of good faith may… be awarded, if only a little.”

Shiro was having none of this game. One thing that had always worried him about Lotor was his political cunning-- he had always been excellent at dancing around subjects, saying what the right people wanted to hear at just the right time, twisting the truth to paint him in the absolute most positive light. In a way, Shiro had always admired him for that, as frightening as it might be.

“What do you want, Lotor?”

“I would like to come home, Demon King,” Lotor answered plaintively, a pained look spreading over his face, his blue eyes even watering a little. “You do not _know_ how all of these years, I have missed the demon-fires of Hell, the diamond gardens, the golden cities, the obsidian palace. I wish for no power, no rank. Merely to be allowed to stay here, as an equal.”

He dropped the last sentence the same way one might move a piece in chess, confident that they have just placed the opponent in check, and are watching their face in delight, for the moment they realize that they are on the road to loss.

Shiro could feel all of his courtiers’ eyes on him, most notably those of the ones most likely to turn against him if he said exactly the wrong thing. He could feel the force of their thoughts, their commands, their internal challenges to his legitimacy in the power of their gazes. He knew there was no way out of this.

“Alright.”

Lotor’s smile stiffened into one that looked less like a grin of delight and more a grimace of determination, his eyes gleaming.

“You mean it? I am free?”

Again, Shiro felt the room hold its breath, watching him, knowing that the fate of Hell depended upon his words.

“By the power of the Demon King, I swear that you are no longer an exile of Hell. You will be watched. But…” he resisted the urge to sigh in defeat, “you are free.”

Around him, he saw the insurrectionists turn to each other in barely contained excitement, and knew that he had only delayed the inevitable. War was most certainly coming.

If something didn’t change soon, he might even lose his head.

 

~Lance~

He knew the moment Keith was gone.

It was difficult to describe _how_ he knew. He’d been trying to calm himself down after confronting his roommates, and then suddenly, he’d just _known_ , as if there had been a string wrapped around his heart this entire time that had only just then been pulled taut.

What had happened? Was Keith alright? Was he hurt? Where did he go?

And what could Lance do about it?

His head was so mixed up with questions that he was trying to answer all at once, that he couldn’t answer any of them, just tried to breathe deeply while his heart raced.

It was Lotor. No, how could it be Lotor? Lotor was an exile; if _Matt_ didn’t have enough power to open up a portal, and was stronger than Lotor while he was on Earth, then Lotor couldn’t possibly.

Something else had happened. Something he didn’t understand. He needed help. He needed his friends.

And he needed his bow, because without Keith, there was no one to protect him but himself.

He crossed the room quickly to where he had set his bow case against the wardrobe, like always, swinging the case over his shoulder. He started to make his way out the door before he reconsidered, going back to the wardrobe. Behind it, he’d stowed his “lucky arrow,” the first arrow he had ever landed in the perfect-dead center of a target. Lance had declared it lucky, and kept it stashed somewhere safe, so that he would never lose it.

Today felt like a time that he might need it.

He leaned over with his phone’s flashlight mode, searching behind the wardrobe for the telltale bright blue of the arrow’s feathering, but stopped when he saw something else, instead, catching the light and reflecting it back.

Wincing from the glare, he reached out and grabbed the object, grimacing when it cut into his skin, thankfully not making it past the calluses. He found a flat end and pulled, revealing a black sword longer than his arm.

It was an odd shape, and made of some kind of shiny black glass-- obsidian, he was pretty sure someone had called it-- carved all along the blade and hilt with tiny little red symbols that he couldn’t read, but looked somehow familiar.

Where had he seen them before?

 _The intricate rug lain across the floor, decorated with what looked a bit like an Indian mandala with a twist, a series of circles lapping over each other, writings in an unfamiliar language scrawled along the flow of the pattern_ …

The summoning circle. He’d seen symbols like this on the summoning circle that Keith had come out of.

Then, these were demonic?!

He tilted the blade towards himself, gazing down at his reflection in the dark glass. The blade felt warm in his hands, familiar, although he’d never seen it before.

 _It belongs to Keith_ , he thought, without knowing how he knew.

As if triggered by the thought, the sword began to glow a deep violet, and Lance felt as if he were being jerked forward, although he knew his feet were stationary. Suddenly, he was being pulled through space, as if his entire room had been transformed into a screen for a 3-D movie only seen in first-person perspective.

_He held the sword in his hands, barely able to hold it up, it was too heavy, too big. He stared at it for a while, running his thumb over the engravings, wondering what they all said. And then he was looking up, up, up, at a man whose face he couldn’t quite see, but whose presence almost intimidated him, having nothing to do with his great black wings and huge violet horns that curled over the back of his head and around his ears._

_“Learn to fight, Keith,” the man said. “There will never be a time in this world where you will not have to fight. I have learned that the hard way._

_“Father?”_

_But the man gave no answer-- he couldn’t. He was already fading from view, replaced by a pair of outstretched hands, one dark, one light._

_Lance-- no, Keith-- took hold of the hands and hauled himself to his feet, finding himself between a pair of children, one whose long, curling white hair and graceful golden-white wings made her look like a much younger Allura, and the other, a young boy with black hair and curling horns like Keith’s, but their faces were much different._

_“Keith, you can’t keep picking fights you can’t win,” the older boy was saying. And then the girl was agreeing, beginning to walk just a bit ahead of him, shaking their heads disapprovingly, before the boy said something that made Allura’s face soften, and laughter begin to bubble out of her mouth._

_The King again, taking Keith’s hand and placing it in Allura’s, saying, “You two are going to marry each other someday, my son. For the sake of both our peoples.”_

_His words felt strange, cloudy, and Keith turned to Allura for clarification, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at his brother, standing a ways off with an expression that neither Keith nor Lance could name. He was too young-- they were all too young-- to understand it yet._

_The three of them painting on the side of a golden wall, drawing all of their favorite things. Keith was still too little to reach up high, so he would point and Allura and the older boy would paint for him, ever-so-patiently, occasionally smiling at each other as if sharing some secret joke._

_The three of them training in a large silver pavilion lit up by fires that flickered in dozens of different colors. Allura was battling both boys at once, knocking Keith’s obsidian sword out of his hands with her whip and then dodging the older boy’s attack just to grab him by the collar and lift him into the air, grinning. “You’ll have to try harder than that to beat an angel, Shiro,” she chided._

_The boy named Shiro smiled softly, as if he was hardly disappointed by his loss. “I’ll keep that in mind.”_

_The three of them again, surrounded by blinding white light, staring down at a hole in the ground that was playing out the life of a human as if it were a movie._

_“Did you see that guy?!” Keith’s voice was shouting, nudging the older boy. “Shiro, he didn’t care at all about Allura’s charge. I say we kill him.”_

_“Keith, we’re supposed to_ guard _the humans, not kill the ones who do bad things! That’s not how angels do things!” Allura chastised._

_“And it’s not how Demon Princes should behave, either,” the boy named Shiro added, turning back to Allura and smiling at her encouragingly. “Go on, Allura, I think you’re doing great.”_

_The light around Lance began to glow brighter, flickering faster. Shiro, Allura, Shiro, Allura. The King’s funeral. Shiro’s coronation, with Allura smiling as she came to give him a slight curtsey, announcing her respects to the new king. Fighting together, sometimes back-to-back as they pushed through hordes of demons. Always Shiro, Allura, and Keith, but mostly Shiro and Allura. Shiro and Allura. Shiro and Allura._

_Even when Keith came falling back down from Earth into Hell, too broken to nurse his own wounds, they were the ones who found him, who brought him home, shared worried looks and squeezed each other’s hands in comfort and shared whispered words of encouragement._

_Shiro and Allura._

With a gasp, Lance dropped the sword, letting it fall to the floor, its tip embedding itself into the carpet. The images stopped immediately, although Lance still felt as if his world was spinning. He looked down at his hands, checking to make sure that they were really his own. Yes. The usual brown, not Keith’s inhumanly pale white.

His bow was still slung over his shoulder, its weight on his back beginning to ground him, help him focus on where he was, what was happening.

When his vision stopped swimming, Lance focused again on the obsidian sword. Keith’s sword.

Gingerly, he picked it up again, careful this time not to look into the reflective surface. He’d been sure that Keith hadn’t had a weapon when he’d crawled through the summoning circle, let alone something like this.

Allura and Shiro, Allura and Shiro, Allura and Shiro… those were Keith’s memories he’d been watching, weren’t they? Growing up as a demon prince, alongside his brother and his fiance. They’d all left Lance with an odd feeling, one of warmth but also of distance, like a fire one is standing just a bit too far away to truly appreciate. It had always been Shiro, Keith, and Allura, hadn’t it?

Lance stopped, feeling all of his thoughts finally click into place.

No. It had always, always been Shiro and Allura, and Keith.

Lance jumped into motion, running to his closet, yanking out a spare blanket and tossing it onto the floor, laying the black sword onto it and then rolling the blanket around it as well as he could to disguise its status as a weapon, adding another blanket just for good measure, so it looked enough like a sleepover blanket roll instead of a wickedly sharp demonic blade.

He tucked the sword-blanket roll under his arm, snatched his lucky arrow from its hiding place, and hurried out the door, because for what he needed to do, he could definitely use a lot of professional help.


	13. The Search

~Keith~

He woke up on a comfortable bed, but the air around him was cold, damp, and dark, despite the demon-fire flickering in the corner of the room. He sat up, stretching his stiff shoulders and looked around.

He knew this place. Lucifer’s Tower, according to legend the place Lucifer was imprisoned after the first demonic insurrection, only to be released at the end of all worlds. Also according to legend, he was still in there somewhere, locked in by the layers and layers of magic-binding enchantments that surrounded the tower. Anyone brought in by the Demon King was not going to be getting out.

And the fact that it was _Lucifer’s_ Tower meant that angels were powerless inside, too. How did Keith know? Well, whatever the legend said, historically Keith knew that the tower was used to house angels that demons had captured in battle. He was well and truly stuck, whatever the effort to provide him with a comfortable bed meant.

He glanced down at his wrists and saw a ragged scar forming, obviously the result of the palace staff trying to heal him despite the fact that Lotor had cut him with a blessed blade. But why Lotor had spilled his blood without killing him, like he could have, Keith was really, really not sure.

He heard the creaking of the door to his chamber, and tucked his wings around himself, hiding his wrists from view and watching through his feathers warily.

Shiro stepped into view, his face stuck in a perpetual frown. “Keith, are you feeling alright?”

Keith didn’t say anything.

“Look, I… get that you’re angry at me for sticking you in here, but things are getting seriously bad in Hell. There are revolts, and people are aiming for both of our necks, and I... I can’t have you running away again. Keeping you in here is for your own safety. I know you’re not really excited about the marriage to Allura, but now you’ve kind of gotten everyone stuck. Going through with it seems like the only way to get out of this mess.”

Keith didn’t say anything.

“Keith…” Shiro reached up to touch the bars separating Keith’s cage from the other half of the room, but pulled his hands back when he remembered that the enchantments would sting him. “I really didn’t want you to come back in the circumstances you did. I never expected Lotor of all people to step in. I always thought… you would come back on your own.”

Keith kept his expression steely, curling his hands into fists. “Let me go back.”

Shiro blinked. “Back?”

“Let me go back to Earth,” Keith said again.

“Keith, did you hear anything I just said?”

“I never said goodbye. I never told him I was going to leave. And I… I still have to grant his wish.”

“Didn’t your contract end?”

Keith shook his head, pressing a hand to his heart, clutching at the twisting feeling inside of himself. “No. It’s still here. I can tell.”

“Keith, you can’t leave. Even if you wanted to, I’m the only person, demon or angel, that can step foot in this place. I’ll do what I can for your human master, but just… tell me why you’re doing all of this.”

“I’m doing it because you’re a moron.”

Shiro sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, fine. You don’t want to talk. I’ll come back some other time.”

He left the room quickly, the heavy golden door closing behind him, and closing Keith into his prison again. He could look out a huge window at the fires of Hell below him, but he couldn’t ignore the twisting in his heart.

_Please, let this all work out. Don’t let Lance get involved in all of this because of me._

 

~Lance~

“Okay, run this by me _one more time_ ,” Hunk insisted, the expression on his face doubtful. “You want us to help you go _where?_ ”

“Hell,” Lance answered, probably the third time he’d had to confirm it for his friends.

Lance had called his friends on the way to go see them, telling them to meet him at the Holts’ house. Hunk had apparently been in the middle of a nap, because he was still yawning when he came into Matt's room for the grand reveal of the sword, but he’d come anyway. Because that was Hunk for you.

As soon as Matt had seen the black sword, he’d had a little bit of a freak out, demanding to know how Lance had obtained Keith’s demonic blade. He’d calmed down a bit after Lance had explained everything, but he still looked extremely troubled by all of this.

“It’s true that Lotor no doubt brought Keith back to Hell to essentially retrieve his bounty, but, based on what’s happening there right now, I’d say Keith isn’t exactly home. He’s definitely locked in Lucifer’s Tower. Even if I were to get back, there’s no way I can save him. I can’t get anywhere near the place.” He frowned down at the black blade. “But wait!” He suddenly shouted, his eyes lighting up.

“What?” Pidge asked, still measuring the sword, taking pictures, and scanning its heat signatures.

“I can’t get to Lucifer’s tower, but… Lance _can._ ”

All three humans stopped, staring at Matt incredulously. “Uhhh… what?” Hunk asked. “Matt, you’re supposed to be telling him that going to _literal_ _Hell_ is something we tell people as a curse, not encouraging him!”

“Look,” Matt began, taking the sword by its hilt and lifting it to the light. “This sword is bound to its owner. One of its specialties is that the sword is stronger and more powerful based on the strength of its wielder's heart, partially by absorbing bits of his personality. In this case, Keith’s.”

“Which explains the replay Lance mentioned,” Pidge commented.

“Right. Now, normally, nobody would be able to access its power except Keith. But I think I get why Lance has it. It’s collateral.”

Hunk tilted his head questioningly. “Like, when you borrow something and they want to make sure you’re going to pay it back?”

Matt nodded, handing the sword to Lance, who felt oddly comforted by its weight in his hands. “Exactly. That’s how Lotor was able to take Keith without breaking Lance’s contract. Somehow, he brought Keith’s sword out of Hell and put it in Lance’s room. It is an ancient way for powerful demons to rejuvenate themselves while still under power of their masters. But it’s so rare, I haven’t heard of anyone doing it for centuries. Most demons forget it’s even a possibility. Although…”

“Yes?” Lance asked, trying to focus on something besides the knot forming in his stomach.

“To settle the rearrangement of the demonic contract, the demon has to spill its blood. So Keith might not be very healthy right now.”

Lance could tell. He wanted to hurry and get started. “But what did you mean about being able to get to Keith?”

Matt grinned, clapping him on the back. “Lance, I don’t think Lotor realizes this, but since he didn’t sever the contract, you’re still tied to Keith, like, with an invisible string. You can find him anywhere. Reach him anywhere. _Even Lucifer’s Tower._ And since you’re neither demon nor angel, the magic-binding won’t do anything to you. If you can get into Hell… you might actually be able to rescue him!”

Hunk raised his hand. “Uh, hate to break up the party, but no one here can open a portal. How’s he gonna get there in the first place?”

“I know a way!” Pidge suddenly offered, her eyes getting wide, magnified by the glasses she totally didn’t actually have to wear, before she dashed off, out of the room and across the hallway, where Lance could hear a bunch of things getting thrown around, a few crashing sounds, some swearing, more shuffling, and a dog yipping, before she came rushing back into Matt’s room, breathing heavily and her glasses askew.

“You okay there, Katie?” Matt asked.

“Shut up. Okay, so ever since Keith and Matt showed up, I’ve been doing research on magic. Which originally made me feel like a failure to science at first, but the more I looked into it, the more I started to find that magic is just science looked at from different directions. I mean, after all, the first gunpowder was originally designed for alchemical magic, and it was only later that people realized its practical and recreational applications--”

“Pidge.” Lance reminded her, his tone curt.

“Right. Anyway. Look. This is a map of known sacred areas in the States about a hundred fifty years ago.” She opened a roll of paper that turned out to be a map of the country, and not a new one. It actually looked hand-drawn, so it was kind of a pity that Pidge had treated it so roughly. “And don’t ask me how I have this. Because it’s a long story that might implicate my real brother in criminal activity. For the sake of returning it to its real owners. So…” she dug in the desk again, finding a roll of string. “We’re in this area, right?”

She looped the string through her fingers, making a circle. “There are three sacred places within this circle, and I think they might hold the answers.”

“You’re talking about ley lines?” Matt suggested.

“Exactly!”

“What, like the things in Ghostbusters?” Lance questioned.

“I thought they didn’t exist, but that was back when I didn’t think Heaven or Hell existed either. Anyway. So ley lines are kind of like… magical roads. The gridwork of the worlds, all three of them. Ley lines connect them. That’s why sacred places tend to fall on ley lines. Magic is stronger there. So if we can find a place where ley lines converge-- just like in Ghostbusters-- Matt #2 might have enough power to open a portal. Right?”

She’d been talking so quickly that nobody had been able to get a word in edgewise, but now she looked at Matt #2 expectantly.

He shrugged, then smiled proudly. “You really are a genius. Yeah, but finding one isn’t gonna be easy. The angels have concealed most of them.”

Lance’s eyes lit up. “But Matt… we have powers now, remember?”

 

~Hunk~

Was he experienced with this magic stuff? No. Did he believe in it? Absolutely. Was he terrified out of his wits? 100%. But was he going to let Lance do all of this crazy stuff by himself? Definitely _not_.

“Just tell me what I need to do, man.”

He wouldn’t describe the process of finding the ley line convergence exactly… _easy._  It had involved first re-designing the Demon-Revealer for the purpose, while Lance had done a search of an online card catalog with Matt #2’s help, trying to find copies of some legit books of magic so they could figure out exactly what the hell they were doing. Pun intended.

Their first stop was a department store that, according to Pidge’s map, had once been the sight of a huge First Nations burial ground.

“The reports on the web say that it’s still kind of haunted, so I thought it would be a good bet,” Pidge had explained.

“Ummm… Matt, ghosts don’t… actually exist, right?” Hunk had asked.

“Huh? Of course they do. They’re not actually conscious beings, though. Just memories so strong that the Earth remembers them.”

Which was comforting, until it turned out that the reason the building was “haunted” had nothing to do with the ghosts and everything to do with a group of havoc-raising demons.

“RUN! FASTER!” Pidge urged.

“I’m running as fast as I can go, man!” Hunk huffed, hauling ass with Pidge on his shoulders, not even caring that people were looking at him weird, because they couldn’t see the six or seven middle-class demons chasing after them, claws glimmering, fangs dripping, and eyes hungry.

They encountered Lance and Matt, who had agreed to search the other side of the shopping center (because splitting up is _always_ a great idea in haunted shopping malls, right?), who looked at them like they were crazy before they saw the demons coming after them.

“Hunk, what did you _do?!_ ” Lance shouted, already beginning to run away, too.

“We, found, the, ley, line,” Hunk huffed, too short of breath to say it clearly.

“And?”

“Well, the demons found it too!” Pidge offered, the book of magic they’d checked out from the library (78% legit, according to Matt #2) pressed close to her face as she read. Which she could do, since Hunk was the one actually running. Matt was already setting up a web of magic that managed to snare some of the lesser demons, but the rest pushed through.

“Got it!” Pidge shouted, and then ripped a page out of the book and tossed it at the demons as she shouted something in what sounded like Latin, and suddenly the paper exploded outwards in sparkles of multi-colored light, which burned the demons wherever it touched. Those who weren’t incinerated instantly were caught by Matt’s web, until they were left motionless in the center of the hallway by a net of silver light. Well, as far as Hunk could tell it looked like silver light. Apparently it was invisible to most bystanders.

Hunk, Pidge, and Lance, however, were not, and they were definitely getting stared at. And Hunk was pretty sure at least one person was running for mall security. Exactly what Hunk needed. Getting chased out of a shopping center by a mall cop. What a story _that_ would make.

“Quick,” Matt shouted, “Pidge, Hunk, it doesn’t matter which one, wish for everyone in this mall to forget that they ever saw us or anything that we’ve done today!”

“I wish for everyone in this mall to forget that they ever saw us or anything that we’ve done today!” Hunk shouted immediately, partially out of panic.

Matt spun his moonlight-silver staff, and for a moment, it looked like everyone fell asleep where they stood, their eyelids closing and their faces relaxing. When their eyes opened, all of the customers looked around curiously, before shaking their heads and continuing on their way, as if nothing had ever happened.

Matt huffed in relief, lowering his staff. “That was close.”

“You’re telling _me_ ,” Hunk breathed, collapsing on the floor next to a large fountain, taking Pidge down with him. A few people gave them weird looks for this, too, but not nearly as weird as the ones they’d given him for running full-speed away from nothing. Actually, he was pretty sure one lady shook her head and whispered “college students” under her breath.

“That was awesome, Pidge!” Lance declared, still staring at the captured demons. “If humans can do magic like that, why do we ever bother summoning demons?!”

Matt frowned, stepping up to the captives. “Human magic isn’t really good at affecting the physical world. Usually the most they can manage is sensation and perception, things that come naturally even to many animals, let alone supernatural creatures. Like cats. Which are both.”

“Right. That would explain Red,” Lance huffed.

“Oh, and, Hunk, I’m sorry for this, but I’m gonna need a payment from you for the wish. Maybe… your hoodie?”

“ _WHAT?!_ Man, I like this hoodie!”

“Sorry, it was spur-of the moment. But even though you didn’t summon me, I can’t grant a wish without payment. That’s how it works.”

Hunk grumbled, but waited for Pidge to untangle herself from him before he tugged off the hoodie and handed it to Matt. “Here. It’s a little big for you, but…”

Matt took it, tying it around his waist. “Okay, that’s that.”

“Traitor!” one of the captive demons demanded, in a high squeaky voice that totally did not match its body shape, which was that of an enormous man, but with disproportionately huge arms and thick, gnarly skin covered with shaggy gray hair.

“Aw, come on, Ata, it’s not that bad,” Matt replied nonchalantly.

“Malthias, how could you stoop so low, to grant the wish of humans without even being forced to by a contract?!” another hissed, this one shaped like a skeleton draped in skin so thin it was practically see-through, punctuated by red eyes.

“You forget,” Matt answered, leaning on his staff, “that human wishes are more powerful than their emotions. You wouldn’t even _be_ in this world if it weren’t for a human being, right?”

“Summoned to curse a neighbor, of course. Although he had to deal with the consequences,” the skeletal one answered, with a characteristic, but disconcerting grin.

“We resort to tricks only because you know as well as I do that contracts with humans are some of the most powerful things there are.”

Hunk sat up, blinking at Matt. “Wait, really?”

The demons glared fiercely at all of them. “Don’t tell them that, Malthias. They’ll get _ideas_ about summonings! Just kill us and get it over with!”

“These guys aren’t interested in summoning more demons into Earth. Now tell me where the convergence is.”

“Fuck off.”

“I just want to get home.”

“Long live the new emperor.”

Matt jerked backwards, clearly surprised by the hairy demon’s words, before both vanished out of his web, into nothing. Matt swore, turning back to the group with gritted teeth. “They got away.”

“Clearly,” Pidge answered. “But what was that about human contracts being powerful?” She adjusted her glasses, grabbing the magic book from where it had fallen and flipping through the pages. “I never saw anything about that in my research.”

“It’s true,” Matt sighed, sitting down on the edge of the fountain. “I guess I have to tell you guys eventually. In some ways, humans are the weakest beings in the three worlds. But they have exactly one thing that balances everything out-- agreements.”

“Meaning?” Lance asked, untying his sword-blanket bundle and retying it quickly before anyone saw it.

“If an angel or a demon makes a contract with a human, they _have_ to honor it. There’s no way around it for us. Not so much for humans. After all, they break promises all the time.” He said this a little bitterly, but Hunk decided not to pursue it. “Sometimes, if the wish is strong enough, all the power of Heaven and Hell can’t break it. Call it humanity’s trump card.”

“But Lance never made his wish?” Hunk asked, nudging his best friend with his shoulder.

“Exactly,” Matt answered with a wicked grin that, for the first time, made him look truly demonic. “Which is why all of Heaven and Hell should be peeing themselves right now at the idea of the three of you.”

 

~Lance~

It wasn’t the most impressive thing. The ley line convergence, that is. Apparently the demons they’d encountered earlier had been feeding on it, rather than humans, which helped them survive at such a size. But it didn’t really look like much. A few scratches in the floor, really. Maybe in the past, this had been a giant graveyard, but there was nothing here but more shopping mall basement, which Hunk’s magic had helped them access.

If he couldn’t _sense_ the convergence, he wouldn’t even know it was there.

It was a kind of heaviness, movement in the air. He felt a bit of vertigo, as if he was standing both at the top of a skyscraper and at the bottom of a deep ravine, both at the same time. High and low, light and heavy, all at once.

Believe it or not, it was actually the cats that had found it. After finding the ley line, they’d gone back to campus to enlist the help of Red and Blue, who weirdly enough hadn’t been opposed to the idea. Once they’d been released in the mall, the cats had led them straight to the convergence point like it was nothing. Now they sat atop a nearby stack of crates, watching the humans with interest.

“Well, you ready?” Matt asked him. “Just a final reminder, but once we go through that doorway, only the Demon King or an angel can send you back. So chances are, you’re not going to be able to go home until this is all sorted out. You sure you want to do this?”

Lance hesitated for a moment, just long enough to see movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked at it, and saw… a woman, staring at him.

She crouched among the storage crates, her eyes clear and brown, her face filled with grief.

It took Lance a moment to realize that she was the first _real_ ghost he’d seen. Thanks to her old Haudenosaunee clothes and jewelry, and the fact that she was just a bit translucent.

She clutched a baby to her chest, tears running silently down her cheeks as she moved, giving her baby a kiss on the head before standing up and putting the baby at the center of the convergence.

And then she disappeared.

The whole scene gave Lance chills, through his whole body. He’d battled demons, been dangled from a building by an angel, and had seen a rose turned to diamond, and yet there was something about this silent replay of a death-memory that turned everything serious. Nothing but a ghost.

He swallowed. “I’m ready.”

Matt nodded, and began working the magic that would open the portal, occasionally reaching out to Pidge and Hunk, to pull the energy required from them as well. Lance felt something brush his leg, and jumped, but looked down only to see Red and Blue, both cats rubbing their heads against his legs and purring.

Lance blinked a little at Red. “What, you’re okay with me now?”

The red cat looked up at him and meowed, sitting back on its haunches.

Lance felt like he understood. “I’m gonna bring him back. Or, well, if he wants to. But I’m gonna make sure he’s safe.”

Red seemed satisfied by this answer, again beginning to rub his head against Lance’s leg. Blue, too, was being affectionate, right up to the moment that Matt snapped the portal into existence, a jagged hole in the floor.

“Hurry and get in!” Matt urged Lance. “I can only hold it open for the two of us. Pidge, Hunk… I’m sorry, but…”

“If we don’t hear anything from you for two weeks, I’m summoning you, got it?” Pidge answered immediately. “And it better not take that long.”

The cats suddenly left Lance’s side, climbing onto the boxes again and raising their shackles, hissing.

Shadows moved in Lance’s vision. Demons.

“They came back!” He shouted.

Pidge and Hunk stood up, armed and ready. Hunk tossed him his blanket-bundle, his legs shaking a little, but his face set as Lance caught the bundle in his arms and retrieved the sword from its midst.

“Hurry and go, buddy!” Hunk called. “We’ve got this!”

Lance hesitated for just a moment, but the portal was already starting to close from the edges inwards, and Matt was grabbing his arm and yanking him towards it.

“I’m counting on you guys! Stay safe!” he shouted, before he felt the earth fall out from underneath him, and he was falling down, down, down, down, toward a dark city far below.

Until his fall was interrupted by a pair of arms scooping him out of the sky and halting his fall.

An angel, with white hair and dark skin. An angel, that was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. An angel, that Keith was supposed to marry.

Just behind her, an older angel with orange hair was holding tightly to Matt #2, pinning his arms behind his back, sliding shackles around the demon’s wrists while he was too surprised to do anything about it.

“I’m sorry, Lance,” Allura said. “But you won’t be rescuing anyone today.”


	14. Prisoners

_Lotor. Lotor. Lotor. Lotor._

The cheer spread across Hell like a cloud of poisonous gas, seeping into the cracks in windows, pouring into the deepest pits, settling across old abandoned battlefields, suffocating anything that opposed it into silence. _Lotor. Lotor. Lotor. Lotor._

It had started as a whisper, of the exiled prince returned, bringing the runaway Keith with him, who the King had not been able to catch. Perhaps he was more skilled than the royal family.

It grew into a murmur, admiring the exiled prince’s grace, having done such a great deed for the king and yet asking in return only to be allowed to come home.

It grew into a muttering, spread by those who would latch onto any chance of demonstrating the Demon King’s weakness, that perhaps Lotor was more worthy of the throne than the current royal family. After all, what did Shiro and Keith have to justify their power aside from their alliance with the angels?

It grew into a hum, when even those who had never doubted the royal family before began to wonder aloud if Lotor may not be the war criminal they had believed him to be. A hum, buzzing with curiosity about his beauty, his kindness, his strength, strength enough to survive in the human world. After all, they knew so little about him--perhaps the current royal family had simply lied.

It grew into a shout. It grew into a chant, a cadence, a scream, a chaos, choking out anything that did not join it, spreading across all of Hell, dousing the lights that glittered like jewels and igniting flames that roared with bloodthirst, turning the twilight day into a crimson dawn.

“Lotor! Lotor! Lotor! Lotor! Lotor!”

“Long live the rightful King!”

“Let justice have its rite!”

It grew. It spread. It poisoned. It choked.

And Lotor had never even had to lift a finger.

 

~Lance~

“Allura, please. Let me out,” Lance pleaded, leaning heavily against the bars and peering out at her, as she began strapping her battle armor on, aided by the angel with the orange hair and mustache, who Lance now knew to be named Coran.

“If I listened to everyone who asked me ‘please,’ I’d be dead already,” she replied flatly, not meeting his eyes.

“I don’t know about that,” Malthias answered, sitting cross-legged on the floor and looking up at the two angels with his big yellow eyes. “I don’t know too many demons nice enough to say please.”

Allura glared at him. “ _You_ would have avoided being a prisoner if you would have just brought Prince Keith back in the _first_ place instead of deciding to befriend his human master.”

Matt snapped his mouth shut, looking down sheepishly.

Lance still felt the string around his heart. If anything, it was tighter than ever, and spinning itself into knots. He couldn’t afford to waste time like this. He needed to get out, but more than anything, he needed Allura to _understand_ , to truly know what Lance finally did.

Coran tightened the straps on Allura’s golden metal grieves, and with that, she was finished, looking beautiful and terrifying, just like everything about the place in which Lance was imprisoned. It was an ivory spire emerging from the ebony of the demon world, far off from the lights of the demon city and its shining black palace. Inside it was much the same, a white so bright it seemed to glow from within, painful on the eyes that had only just adjusted to Hell’s darkness. A home away from home for angelic ambassadors in Hell, apparently. Complete with prisons of carved gold.

She glanced at him once, frowning, and then began to make her way toward the door, her wings swooping out behind her.

“Allura, wait! You’re making a mistake!”

“Lance, I can’t kill you, and I don’t want to imprison you. But I don’t have a choice. I can’t let Keith run away again. He set in motion things we thought we’d stopped centuries ago. If I don’t… if we don’t finish what we started, what my father planned, everything will fall apart. I’m sorry.”

“Allura, I _know_ why Keith ran away to Earth. And it’s not because he hated the idea of marrying you.”

She paused, turning back to him. For a moment, Lance could swear he could see hesitation in her lavender-blue eyes, and he wasn’t about to waste that chance.

“I saw it, in Keith’s sword. All his life, growing up with the two of you, you and Shiro. How you’d always look after him, together. He loved both of you more than anything. He’d do anything for you guys. Even go back to the human world, which _you_ know more than anyone how much he hated.”

Allura was now listening with interest, with Coran standing behind her, a surprisingly knowing, soft look on his face.

“I did wonder… why he would go back. When he swore he never would. He even allowed his power to be cut in half.”

“He did it _for_ you, Allura. Because he knows you’re in love with Shiro.”

Her wings flashed open, and suddenly she was just in front of his cell, her eyes blazing, her whip so tight in her fingers that it whitened the skin. “You know nothing!”

Lance kept his voice soft, knowing that Allura was scared. That she was going to lose both people most precious to her, that it would be her fault if war was to begin again. She had every right to be afraid. Even if she was raised to believe she could only show strength.

“I’m only telling you what I saw, Allura. What _Keith_ saw, as he was growing up. He couldn’t make you marry him, not when his brother loved you. You were just both too busy worrying about him to think about yourselves. So he didn’t give you a choice.”

Allura pulled back, her wings drooping down, her face pained.

“I… it’s too late, Lance. I can’t change what has been in the works for so many years… I’m not my father.”

“No, you’re just you, and believe me, that’s terrifying enough,” Lance answered, smiling encouragingly. “You kidnapped me from my building and hung me from a flagpole, remember?”

Her lips curled into a tentative smile. “And you’re no less trouble now than you were then.”

Lance paused. “You’re the angel _princess_ , Allura. You don’t have to be locked into fate just because your father chose it for you. You can fix things, if you just believe you can. This can end in a way where everyone gets to be happy. And that includes you.”

She laid a hand on the bars, for a long while staring at him fixedly, her expression intense, universes spiraling in her eyes.

The gate clicked open, and Allura stepped back. “...You had better be right, human boy.”

 

~Shiro~

He wished Allura was with him in all of this. Keith, too. And Malthias. He wished that he wasn’t standing alone as all his people screamed for him to demonstrate his strength in the official Rite of the Demon King. Outside the palace gates, Hell truly looked like the Inferno that Dante had believed it to be.

Inside, the true greatest torture of Hell revealed itself to be silence. Even the echo of the hallways seemed to be eaten up by the chaos and rage outside, so silent that the shuffle of his clothing was as loud as a scream, and just as harsh.

No one spoke, no one wondered, no one questioned. They all knew what was coming, and just silently helped him prepare. Prepare his armor. Prepare his weapon. Clear the courtyard.

He wished they wouldn’t do it in silence. He wished someone would say something. Ask him how he felt, if he believed he could do it, if he wanted help. He knew Allura would, but she was busy attending to other matters. She’d been so distant, ever since Keith had disappeared to the human world. Even her last visit had been brief, and so little of it even spent with Shiro. He missed her, missed her comforting presence, the fresh breeze she always seemed to bring with her, how she brought grace to even the most dismal of places.

He wished Allura were with him. He wished Malthias were with him, supporting him from behind. He wished Keith were with him, carrying some of his burden. Because Shiro had never asked to be King. Sometimes, he wished that he had never been crowned.

But demons didn’t get wishes.

 

~Lance~

Matt peeked around the corner, ducking back just in time for another group of rioting demons to pass by, carrying what Lance _hoped_ was bowls of tomato sauce, shrieking with laughter as it sloshed all over the place, and over themselves.

Lance wondered if it was actually going to be possible to get to Lucifer’s Tower. It was easy enough to find-- made of pure gold, and twice the height of every building in Hell, even the palace-- but there were demons everywhere. Well, obviously, because this was _Hell_ , after all, but the demons were acting a lot like Lance had always _imagined_ demons to act, which tipped him off that something was seriously wrong.

He glanced back at where they’d come from, the angels’ white spire far in the distance, comforted by the fact that at least they’d made it this far.

 _I can’t help you release Keith_ , Allura had said. _If the demons see me freeing the prisoner their new hero had caught, they’ll really believe that the angels have no intention of being on their side. But… I’m letting you go._

She’d handed him his bow and quiver of arrows, finally released from their case, now that there were no laws against openly carrying weapons. And then Keith’s sword, and its sheath, now safely strapped onto Lance’s belt. For a moment, Lance was about to ask her why she had it. But he didn’t think he had to. He already knew why, didn’t he?

And Coran had told him how to reach Lucifer’s Tower, but to hide his scent. Which at first, Lance hadn’t taken seriously, because he was _sure_ he didn’t smell that bad, until they’d encountered their first group of rioting demons, not far from the ivory tower’s base, and they’d immediately swooped down, declaring him “fresh human meat,” and would have eaten him had he not shot them out of the sky.

Not long after that, Matt had essentially doused him in pollen from the nearby flower fields. Which sounds wonderful, considering that Keith had been right in saying that none of the flowers in Hell were _real_ , and instead were crafted from precious jewels, but in reality is absolutely unpleasant, and Lance smelled like the contents of a Hollister store had all broken on his skin. It almost made _him_ dizzy, and demons’ sense of smell was way stronger than his.

Which led them to where they were now, making their way carefully through the city, dodging any rioters, and avoiding the occasional wild blazes that would erupt seemingly out of nowhere.

Lance clutched his bow tightly, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

Matt waved him forward, flattening himself against the side of a building. “Okay, the streets look deserted,” he whispered. “Everyone’s making their way to the palace. Which isn’t good for Shiro, but-- look out!”

Lance ducked, just in time for a huge claw to barely miss his head, digging into the shimmering silver brick of the building he’d just been standing next to.

He brought up his bow, aiming it at the giant monster, which didn’t actually look that demonic at all. Just like a human, but twice the size, and with bright red skin. He fired, and the demon caught the arrow in its hands, looking at it curiously. “Oh, an enchanted arrow! Interesting! But not enough.”

It snapped it carelessly, reaching out to swipe at Lance again, but stopped by Matt stepping in front of him, taking the force of the blow with the side of his staff. He strained from the blow, gritting his teeth. Malthias had gotten a lot stronger ever since returning to the demon world, but Lance was pretty sure he hadn’t gotten to 100% yet. And this demon was probably a greater demon.

“And if it isn’t the King’s assistant!” the demon said with disgust. “Once Lotor’s the king, we won’t have to listen to pathetic scum like you.”

Then the fight began, and Lance had to do his best to get out of the way. To be honest, it was the first time he’d ever _really_ seen the extent of Malthias’ power over moonlight, how it could be crafted into anything, whether it was silver storms or silver soldiers.

But this demon was no slouch, either. The buildings around them crumbled with the fight, and other demons were beginning to gather. Lance didn’t want to kill them, but he didn’t have a choice. He shot arrow after arrow, feeling the strain through his bow, wondering how he could possibly be doing now what he couldn’t bear to do earlier-- actually hurt someone.

He reached into his quiver to pull out another arrow, but it was empty, except for his lucky one. But he couldn’t use that. He needed to save it. For what, he didn’t know. But something.

Another demon reached out to grab him, and he smacked it away with his bow, happy when he heard the cracking sound of the wood against its skull, but not so happy with the damage he was probably doing to his bow. Another shadow reached for him, and he again spun to strike out with the weight of his bow, but this time, it didn’t connect, instead stopped by the giant red demon’s huge hand, in which the bow looked barely more than a child’s toy.

“Oh now, human, I think you’d better quit with that.”

And then it closed its fist.

Lance heard the splintering of the wood and fiberglass as if it were his own bones that were cracking to pieces. For a moment, the red demon grinned at him with satisfaction at the utter devastation on his face before it was back to its battle with Malthias, apparently having more trouble with the Demon King’s “assistant” than it had originally expected.

What was Lance going to do without his bow?! In _Hell_?!

He was royally fucked. Well, actually, he wasn’t, although he’d certainly tried.

Anyway.

“USE! THE! SWORD!” Malthias was shouting over the chaos of magic.

“But it’s not mine!” Lance shouted back.

“If it’s Keith’s, then it will love you about as much as he does. Just do it!”

As another demon tried to grab him, Lance realized he didn’t have much choice. He reacted reflexively, pulling the sword from its sheath, ducking the demon’s attack, and slicing the demon in half with the obsidian blade, all in one smooth motion.

The monster fell, at about the same time the giant red demon was caught in a massive explosion of silver light that left nothing but a smoldering pile of red ash.

“Come on, that’s all of them!” Matt shouted. “Let’s go before we get any more company!’

Lance didn’t need to be told twice. He took off running, for the first time thankful that Hell was in so much chaos in general, because it seemed like the chaos of the battle hadn’t even attracted that much attention.

He was still holding Keith’s blade as he ran, wondering if it was right to keep using it like this. If he was doing the demonic blade an injustice by using it with such an unpracticed hand.

But it felt oddly _natural_ in his hands. Like it belonged there.

Actually, you know what belonged in his hands? _Keith’s_ hand. And it was specifically for that purpose that he was going to use this sword, even as he slid the sword back into its sheath, scooped up the broken pieces of his bow, and then continued running.

~

Lance looked up, up, up at the tower, and then down at the twenty or thirty demons that guarded the entrance. There was no way he was going to get in there.

The obsidian sword had done a great job of cutting through anything that had gotten in his way so far, but that wasn’t going to be an option this time. According to Matt, these weren’t demons rioting against Shiro, but soldiers loyal to him. They were probably good demons, as paradoxical as that sounded.

Matt #2 huffed and sat down on the ground, groaning. “You’re not going to like hearing this, Lance, but… you’re gonna have to climb it.”

“...what?”

“I told you before. That tower itself will break the magic of anyone who steps through the barrier. Even the guards are standing a distance away from it, see?”

He was right. Within two hundred feet of the tower, the place was deserted.

“I’ve done everything I can,” Matt said again, straightening. “But now, I have to count on you.” He paused, raising an eyebrow. “You know, I never thought I’d have to say that to a human.”

Lance grinned. “You know, I never really understood how you got to be on our side in the first place.”

“It's just that I realized that being a demon doesn’t mean I have to be a monster. We just choose to be what humans believe us to be because it’s easier that way.” He nodded towards the tower. “Now go on, lover boy.”

~

Let’s just say that climbing Lucifer’s Tower wasn’t easy, and spare Lance the details of almost falling like half a dozen times, bursting into tears at least twice, and shouting for his mother, shall we?

Lance hadn’t been a slouch on the climbing wall in gym class, but about halfway up, his old knee injury was starting to act up again. Not to mention that he was pretty sure he’d be seen, and the things he was seeing happening down below him weren’t exactly comforting to his stomach. He was happy that he wasn’t really afraid of heights, or this would be _really_ terrifying.

But the gold sides of the tower weren’t really great for climbing, despite all of the carved details to make the tower look like a pair of folded wings. The gold slid under his fingers, and it wasn’t helped along by the sweat. Matt had promised to catch him if he fell, but it looked like Matt was a little bit busy distracting the guards, almost too busy to even look up himself.

But he could do this. He had to do this.

 

~Keith~

He could hear everything going on outside. The anger mixed with disgusting glee, the rioting, the fighting, the chaos, the burning. Soon, they’d be challenging Shiro to face Lotor in the Rite of the Demon King. The same rite that apparently Keith’s father had won so many years ago, ousting Zarkon from power.

The Rite of the Demon King was what happened when politics failed.

Shiro was backed into a corner, and it was his fault. If he were free from this prison, there were things he could do, things he _knew_ he could do, but inside Lucifer’s Tower he had about as much power as a speck of dust.

He stared down at the jagged scars on his wrists that should have healed completely by then, beginning to regret running away to the human world, even just a little. If he hadn’t, he would never have met Lance, or Pidge, or Hunk… but also if he hadn’t, they would have never gotten involved in any of this. Well, Lance would still have accidentally summoned a demon, but probably not one he couldn’t handle, Keith was sure. Lance would be safe, wouldn’t have anyone to worry about, wonder why he wasn’t coming back.

He wondered if maybe he should have just told Shiro and Allura why he was doing it, before he jumped through the portal. But no-- he’d said hundreds of times, “maybe you should just marry each other,” but they’d always been too caught in duty to take him seriously, to really _think_ of themselves. The first time had been when he was a kid, not long after his father had told him he was engaged to Allura.

Shiro had told him that it would make him the first person ever to be a prince of both Heaven _and_ Hell, and Keith had looked at him, confused, and asked, “but aren’t you going to marry Allura?”

Shiro hadn’t really given him an explanation as to why he was wrong, just that it wasn’t what was planned for them.

Later, when they were painting the palace walls, Keith had drawn the three of them, with Shiro and Allura holding hands, and they had told him, no, no, it was supposed to be Allura and Keith.

He’d known his whole life, probably, that they had always belonged with each other, long before they did. And when conflict inevitably rose in Hell, old forces who wanted a return to the ways of Zarkon’s rule, Allura and Shiro had only further sunk into their dedication to duty.

But it was when he’d heard Shiro say it himself that he’d made the decision to leap headfirst back into the world that had tortured him.

He’d just returned from a patrol in the Southern Marshes, but had arrived unannounced, making his way to Shiro’s room to greet his brother after a long absence. The door had been shut, and he’d been just about to knock when he’d heard it:

“I hate that I feel this way about her, Malthias. We both have our own responsibilities, and I can’t weigh Allura down with the knowledge that I love her. It will just hold both of us back.”

And then Matt’s voice: “Shiro, you can’t blame yourself for something you can’t control. Besides… I think she loves you just as much, really.”

“That’s impossible.”

Keith had frozen, listening to them debating, before quickly moving on. Because that was Shiro’s way. Even to Malthias, he only briefly showed his true weaknesses. He would play it off as a minor issue, something he can work through. But then, when things would get tough, he would pretend that he was a minor character in all of this, just there to fill the role of the Demon King while Keith had the important work of unifying Hell and Heaven. That if he didn’t make it through the next war, Keith would have to step up. Like it was so inevitable. Like he didn’t matter. Like how he felt didn’t matter.

A few hours later, Keith had jumped through the portal into the human world, forcing Shiro and Allura to think about their duty _and_ themselves.

But like always, he’d just acted on impulse and made everything worse. Just like Shiro, he fell in love with someone he shouldn’t. Everything was going to end in disaster, and he’d be able to do nothing but watch it all happen, up here in the loneliest tower in the three worlds.

And then the glass of his window came raining in.

He jumped to his feet, reaching for his hunting knife, which was of course not there. He readied himself, wondering if the battle had begun. His hands still ached, and he was powerless, but he was ready to protect himself at any cost.

A hand appeared on the windowsill. Long, thin, gnarled and calloused fingers. And then another hand, and then the whole long, thin body, the perfect face, the sea-colored eyes… an impossible person hauled himself over the edge of the window, cursing as he cut himself on the glass, beginning to slip.

But he didn’t, jabbing a black sword into the stone and using it to hold his weight as he climbed over the edge quickly and slipped into the room, right into the pool of light cast by the demon-fire lantern.

Even covered in demon dust, bleeding scratches, and torn clothes, smelling like an entire perfume store, he was the most beautiful person Keith had ever seen. An impossibly beautiful human. An impossible human.

 

~Lance~

He kind of forgot himself when he saw Keith. The string that had been wrapped around his heart this whole time jerked him forward, the obsidian sword falling out of his hands as he stumbled, falling forward into his favorite pair of arms in Heaven, Hell, and Earth, his weight carrying both of them to the ground, wrapped up tightly in Keith’s warm, soft wings. Falling into his favorite lips in Hell, Heaven, and Earth, just kissing him over and over again, pouring all of his relief, his pain, his struggle, his hope into every one.

Also, he’d been kind of overwhelmed when he’d seen Keith’s true form again, since it had been so long since he’d first seen it, fresh out of Hell. He’d forgotten the way his horns made the violet in his eyes sharper, how his wings made him look taller, fiercer. It was too beautiful for him to handle.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Keith breathed between kisses, even as he clutched Lance so tightly to himself that his claws were digging into Lance’s back. Not that he cared. “How are you here?!”

Lance suddenly remembered himself and where he was, and that Matt was waiting as close to the tower as he could to help them escape. There wasn’t much time.

He explained as quickly as he could about the ley lines, about the portal into Hell, about being held prisoner by Allura, about how she’d let him go, and finally about making his way through Hell.

All the while, he never tried to break away from Keith’s touch, too happy to be able to feel it again. He was sure it had been more than a day since he’d first jumped into Hell, although without any real sunlight here it was hard to tell. But finally, when he got to the part about his broken bow, he had to get up to show Keith, pulling the broken bits of wood out from his quiver, where he’d stuffed them as he climbed. He laid them on the floor as he talked, looking at them sadly.

“I’m kind of surprised none of it fell out during the climb, but… yeah. I don’t know _how_ I’m gonna explain this to my dad. So I’m sorry, but… I kinda used your sword for a while.” He suddenly remembered having dropped it, and ran to go pick it up. He held it out to Keith, his cheeks reddening. Because the kisses somehow weren’t embarrassing at all, but admitting that he was so fucking stupidly enamored that he could use his boyfriend’s supposedly only-one-wielder-accepted sword apparently was. “I hope I didn’t damage it.”

He held out the sword and its sheath, and Keith took it, looking at it for a while. “I’ve… really missed this. I never realized how much I relied on it until I was in the human world without it.”

“Oh!” Lance suddenly remembered. “Matt #2 said that you’d be hurt!” He scanned Keith for injuries, but didn’t see any.

“Oh, yeah. Lotor cut my wrists when he captured me,” Keith answered, finishing the task of strapping his sword to his side and holding his arms up for Lance to see. “Though they’re not healing like they should be…”

Lance stared, fascinated, at the ragged skin. He’d never seen Keith _injured_ before. Not for more than a few seconds. He’d really only just been _tired_.

He gingerly slid his fingers across the scar, feeling the ridges in the normally smooth, pale skin.

But as he pulled his hands back, the skin began to knit together right before his eyes, until in less than a moment, it was as if they had never been there.

Keith blinked. “You… healed them?”

“Uhhh…”

“That’s right! I’m still under contract!” Keith remarked, smiling at him. “My energy comes from both Hell _and_ you right now.” He grasped Lance’s arms in his hands, smiling a smile that made Lance feel like he was going to dissolve. Though probably the ache in his muscles from climbing an incredibly high tower was also a factor.

“So… you’re okay?”

Keith shook his head, still smiling, but his eyes hardening with a kind of determination that Lance found difficult to interpret. “Better than okay, Lance. Thanks to you, I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been.”

He stepped forward, picking up the pieces of Lance’s bow and holding them to the light. After a moment, he reached out and pulled a few feathers from his own wings. Lance winced when he did that, because it must be _painful_ , like pulling out your own hair, but couldn’t help but stare in fascination as Keith held them tight to the pieces of broken bow, before they all began to glow, to blend, to change. Just like the dark red rose once had in Keith’s hands.

This time, when the light faded, Keith was holding a wicked-looking bow, of a red and black-swirled wood, and carved with the patterns of feathers. It was gorgeous.

He held it out to Lance, looking sheepish. “It’s not the same, but… we’re not in the human world anymore. I don’t have to grant your wish in order to do magic that lasts forever.” He paused. “I guess making this for you is just granting my own wish.”

Lance fought back a grin. “And what’s _your_ wish?”

“That the people I love can be happy.”

Lance nodded. “I think we can work with that one.” He took the bow out of Keith’s hands and slung it over his shoulder, along with his newly-filled quiver, complete with his lucky arrow. “Shall we?”

Keith nodded, wrapping an arm around Lance’s waist and lifting the both of them up to the doorway. Lance looked down, down, down, at the fires of Hell burning below them, so terrifying to him before. But that was when he was climbing the damn thing himself.

“Are you ready?” Keith asked.

“I was born ready.”

“Liar.”

But Keith stepped forward, his wings snapping open as they dropped, sending them soaring forward into the ever-twilight of Hell, finally ready to do whatever it took to stop a war. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to leave everyone off on a cliffhanger, but although up to now I've been updating once a week or so, I'm getting to the end of my study abroad semester and am thus super busy, so I don't think I'll be able to finish this until I get back to the States in about a month. Just wanted to let all of you know, and thank you so much for reading Wishless up to now! I promise I'll finish it as soon as I have time!


	15. The Rite of the Demon King

~Pidge~

Not gonna lie, escaping from the demon-infested shopping mall hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park. Not all of the spells in the book they’d checked out from the library (and were probably never, ever going to return, thanks to the condition it was now in) had been legit, and the only reason they were able to escape was thanks to Hunk’s quick thinking, taking off the safeguards on the Demon-Revealer so that the tool exploded-- taking most of the demons out with it. Fortunately, it had been a small enough amount of plutonium (less than a quarter of a gram, and not even weapons-grade), that the blast wasn’t enough to compromise the structural integrity of the building. Unfortunately, it _was_ big enough to send mall security, the police, and the firefighters to the area in minutes.

They’d had to run faster than either of them had ever thought they could manage, following the campus cats, who somehow seemed to know how to get out of the mall without getting caught by any of the human authorities that would probably accuse them of terrorism.

They managed to get back to the Holt’s house without getting caught, but they were all in bad shape. Blue had a bad cut just above her front paw as a result of shrapnel from the blast, and Hunk’s shoulder was dislocated from when the big gray demon had caught him in his grasp and pulled.

They hurried up to Matt’s room and shut the door, scrambling for first aid supplies they’d had on hand ever since Mission: Send Lance to Hell had begun. Pidge was so exhausted and cut up that her hands were slippery from sweat and blood, and she wasn’t sure she could even think clearly anymore.

“Okay, um, here we go. First, painkillers. Um…”

She didn’t find what she was looking for, so cursed and ran to her room, grabbed her backpack, ran back to Matt’s room, and dumped the entire contents onto the floor next to the bed. “Here!” She snatched up a bottle and handed it to Hunk, along with her water bottle. “You’re gonna need that before we reset your shoulder.”

“Why don’t we go to a _hospital_?” Hunk suggested through his teeth, still grimacing from the pain.

“Then they’ll _instantly_ connect us to the explosion! We don’t have any demons to cover our asses on this one, Hunk!”

She went back to Matt’s desk and pulled out the entire first aid kit, digging for gauze and antiseptic.

“It’s a good thing your parents are gone for the day,” Hunk remarked, downing three painkillers and the entire water bottle.

She realized that she needed to wash her cuts before she tried bandaging them, so started off toward the bathroom, swinging the door open fast enough for it to hit the adjacent wall with a bang.

And stop up short, before she ran into the person standing in the doorway, his hand risen to just the height of the doorknob.

“Uh… Hey Katie, I’m back!” Matthew Holt blurted before looking around the room, taking in the emptied backpack contents strewn across the floor, the pair of cats huddled in the corner, aggressively grooming each other, and Hunk, collapsed backward on the bed and holding his shoulder, before coming back to his sister’s face. “What… are you doing in my room? And why are you bleeding?!”

 

~Shiro~

The Rite had a long, but simple history.

Once, long ago, a group of angels, led by Lucifer, had defected from heaven. Everyone knows that.

Lucifer and his band of rebels built themselves a sanctuary amidst the ashes of their exile, and that place was called Hell. Most people know that.

Lucifer was a charismatic, but cruel leader. His voice was soft as rose petals when he wanted it to be, but his fist as hard as diamond also. He did not tolerate any who regretted their decision to betray Heaven, who wondered if forgiveness may be possible. Many of these were the ones initially sent to conquer the human world, even if it was as slaves of humanity. Lucifer cared little for them, or that they would be slaughtered, whether it was by Angels in Heaven or by humanity itself. They were expendable, after all.

But his words and his lies were all so sweet it took even the cleverest of demons to realize that he led a rebellion not out of a love of justice but a desire for power. He wanted nothing more than to be greater than God. And if he could not be that, then he would be the God over Hell instead. Most people know that.

What’s not so well known is the moment the Demons decided they’d had enough. His closest advisors, those demons who had once fallen by his side as angels, challenged him to battle. One by one, many fell. He was simply far too strong. He had been, after all, the brightest star in Heaven.

But eventually, he was defeated. Fearing that he was not dead, the victor took charge of all of the demons of Hell and organized the building of a great, powerful tower, that would lock Lucifer away, both the parts of him that belonged to Hell, and the parts that retained Heaven. Even if he lived, he would never again terrorize Hell, Heaven, or Earth.

That’s not to say everything was better. Already too much time had passed for most demons to even remember what it was like to be angels, and Lucifer’s anger had already festered in their hearts. They made the victor their king, out of respect for his strength, but when he showed weakness… well, that’s where the Rite came in.

Demons did not tolerate weakness. Any demon who held the role of King may have to defeat Lucifer again, after all.

If the Demon King could defend his title against challengers, then he would maintain it. If he could not… well, demons aren’t well-known for mercy.

Simple as that.

 

Outside, all of the demons of Hell appeared to be gathering, their screeches, howls, jeers, chants jumbling together into the sound of tortured souls. Shiro looked out the great window, breathing carefully to slow the beating of his heart, which insisted on speeding up. There were thousands out there, barely held back by the palace walls and the laws of the Rite. And thousands more joined every minute, draining from the Northern Pits, the Southern Marshes, and from all around Hell into the city, so many wildly varying shapes pressed together in an ever-flowing throng, so thick it appeared as if waves in a poisoned ocean.

Shiro had always hoped to be a good king to them. There was nothing he could do about the way their power was restricted on Earth, or the punishment many suffered upon being summoned to the human world. But as long as they remained in Hell, Shiro had done everything he could to make their lives peaceful, even pleasant. But perhaps he had misunderstood his people all this time-- war and blood had been their entire existence. How could he expect them to rid themselves of it so easily? How could they, when the only law they would never break itself necessitated bloodshed?

He wondered if every being out there hated him, or if perhaps, some had simply come to watch. Some kind of curiosity, rather than bitterness. It was a thin hope, but one he allowed himself to hold onto.

The palace servants waited by the grand doors, their heads bowed, ready for him. He sighed and made his way towards them, laying a hand on the shoulder of the Nagini that stood closest to the door, her bottom half the spiked green-and-black scales of a bush viper, her top half mostly human, aside from her yellow eyes. She was the Head of the Household, and Malthias’ mother.

“Sleveth, once the Rite begins, I want you all to escape from the palace as soon as possible,” Shiro whispered to her.

She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with concern. “You do not anticipate victory, Your Majesty?”

Shiro swallowed, allowing a brief moment of visible weakness in front of the snake-woman. “I don’t know, Sleveth. But I’ll be able to put more of myself into combat knowing that even if I do fail, you will all be safe.”

Slowly, she nodded, dropping her head back into a bow. “I understand, Your Majesty,” she murmured softly, her hands whitening on the staff she held in her right hand. “I will guide the palace servants to safety, as you wish.”

“Thank you.”

“It is time to begin the Rite,” she said, her head still bowed.

“Then begin.”

She nodded again, tapping her staff against the polished floor. The great silver doors slowly swung open, and she slithered out, still clutching her staff. As soon as she appeared, the roiling masses outside went silent-- they knew what was coming.

“The Demon King accepts the challenge!” She shouted, her voice impossibly loud and yet soft, rippling out over the waiting crowd like a breath of wind. “Send your champions forward, and we begin the Rite!”

The cheering erupted again, and Shiro stepped out behind her, facing the bloodthirsty crowd. It surged forward, pouring over the palace walls, stopping just short of the courtyard, where the battle would take place, all calling for blood. As Sleveth turned, Shiro saw the sorrow in her eyes. But she was faithful to her duty. As she slid past him, and back through the palace doors, she gave him a curt nod, leaving him alone to face his death.

“Wait!”

Shiro looked up, just as a cloud of white descended towards him, the many-colored demon fires glittering off of golden battle armor.

“Allura?!”

The angel princess alighted in front of him, only taking a single moment to give him a shy smile before she faced the demon hordes. It had only been a moment, but it had been more than enough. Shiro felt his shoulders relax, the beating of his heart begin to steady. He was not alone. She was there.

“Just look at this!” a demon perched on the battlements screeched. “An angel thinks she can lord over us, like Heaven always has! But the Rite is our law, Angel! _Hell_ will choose its leader, not you!”

“Is this not proof, that the Demon King is closer allied to the angels than to his own people?!” another shouted, its face lost among the thousands.

“And what does it _matter?!_ ” Allura shouted back, all of the force of heaven pouring from her voice. As she spoke, she appeared to glow brighter, radiating light throughout the courtyard, bright enough against the ever-dark of Hell that the demons could scarcely look at her.

Except Shiro, who had long been used to her radiance.

“Once, you were _all_ angels,” she called out, her arms and wings spread wide. “Or have you forgotten? Once, there was no such thing as demons. It may have been before my time, perhaps even before the time of my father. But we have _always_ been more similar than we have been different.”

Before her, the roiling mass had begun to still, as if transfixed by her voice. They were… actually listening to her.

“I understand your anger, your frustration, your pain, your grief. It is justified. But the fault lies with the _angels_ , not with your king! I thought I could overcome that fault through marriage, like my father had planned, but I see now that that would never solve the problem at the core. Not so long as we continue to ignore the suffering of the demonic people. So if you would like to be angry, be angry at me. If you would fight heaven for what it has done to you, turned you into twisted creatures as punishment for rebellion, then fine. I accept your anger.”

And at this, she dropped her head, her wings drooping behind her, a sight that no demon had ever imagined-- an angel, bowing in submission to the demonic hordes.

It inspired awed whispers, spreading across the crowd, hesitating in their purpose.

_An angel apologizing?_

_It is a trick!_

_But they are too proud to resort to trickery!_

_Could it be true?_

_Surely she knows that we could kill her where she stands?_

“But please,” she continued, her head still bowed, “remember that you are _not_ evil just because of what you were born. Demons, yes. Cursed, yes. For centuries, millennia, humanity has believed that demons are wicked and vile by nature. Because magic frightened them. _Your_ magic frightened them. They used their own powers over you to make any time away from Hell into a living nightmare for any demon. So you became the monsters that they, that _he_ wanted you to be!” she shouted, lifting her head and right arm towards Lucifer’s tower, gleaming red in the fires spiraling out of control throughout the city.

“But humans can change. They can love, they can guide, they can teach. They have taught me. And if they can change, in lifetimes as short as they have, then so can we.”

She fell silent, waiting. Surely, Allura knew that even she could not protect Shiro against _this_ many demons, if they decided to attack him-- not by herself. Yet she stood, tall, and proud as she ever had, for as long as Shiro had ever known her. She did not shake with fear, did not shy from the demons’ gazes. She stood before them, knowing she was not representing the sentiments of Heaven, but merely her own.

In that moment, Shiro could admit to himself, deep inside his own heart, just how much he loved her.

And the incredible was happening-- she had gotten through. The red glow of the demon fires was dying down, and the crowd was dissipating. The rage that had clouded the air for days thinned, breaking down into hesitation, confusion.

Hell didn’t know what to think of her speech.

“You would let an angel dictate our only sacred ceremony!” a hyena-faced demon snarled, saliva foaming from its mouth as if rabid. “We are _DEMONS!_ We will choose our leader _OUR WAY!_ Let the Rite begin!”

Next to it, another of the insurrectionists began to chant, a wicked grin on its face. “Let the Rite begin! Let the Rite begin!”

And it spread, filling the air with it, in shrieks, howls, squeals, bellows, roars.

In front of him, Allura looked horrified. “ _No_ ,” she whispered. “Please, no.”

Shiro stepped forward, laying a hand on her shoulder, an icy calm settling over him. “It’s alright, Allura.”

“Shiro, I--”

“You’ve done the best you could. More than you know. But this isn’t something I can run from. And it’s not something you can interfere with, either. As vicious as they sound… they’re right. The Rite is the only thing that belongs purely to demons. It’s the only law that we will never break. If you keep it from us, demons will have nothing left to call our own. It’ll be chaos.”

Slowly, she nodded. “You _must_ win. I have very important things to say to you.”

“I can’t wait,” he answered with a smile, and then stepped out from behind her, drawing his sword. He made his way down the steps, into the center of the courtyard, facing the jeers, the chants advocating his death. He was not afraid.

Before him, the crowd parted, and Lotor stepped forward, into the courtyard, his face eerily calm, as always, only betrayed by the fierce glint in his eyes.

“I am Lotor, son of Zarkon, the last Demon King to be defeated in the Rite,” he declared, his lips twitching into the hint of a smile. “And I challenge Shiro to battle. To the death, of course.”

“Then as the Demon King, I--” _accept,_ was what he was about to say, but he never got a chance.

A firestorm erupted between Shiro and the former prince, hot enough that both challengers were forced to jump backwards, the Rite once again interrupted before it could begin.

All demons watched in stunned horror as the fire flickered with lightning, to ice, to tendrils of earth that sprang out of the ground and sharpened to a point that just reached the throat of the hyena-headed demon that had enforced the Rite. It leaned backwards, gulping.

In the midst of the storm of magic, a newcomer descended, black and red feathers swirling around him, radiating power and anger.

“I accept the challenge to the Rite of the Demon King in my brother’s stead,” Keith announced, the flames dying around him as he landed, carrying a human boy in his arms. He set the boy gently on his feet, caressing his face for just a moment before turning to Lotor. “After all, if you’re strong enough to fight the Demon King, a mere Prince should be nothing to you, right Lotor?”

Lotor grimaced, his grip on his sword tightening.

“Unless you only think you can defeat me through tricks, while I’m weakened?” Keith jeered, drawing his obsidian sword, which seemed to absorb the light of the demon fires, its edge gleaming.

The human boy ran from Keith’s side, toward Shiro, coming to a stop in front of him and holding his hand out and bowing at the same time, as if he wasn’t sure which one he should do. “Um, Lance. I’m--”

“Keith’s human master,” Shiro finished for him. It was obvious enough, even without the black-and-red bow draped over his shoulder, clearly made with Keith’s magic.

“Yeah. I guess.”

Back on the battlefield, Lotor held his sword in front of him, his fangs bared. “You have no right.”

“Actually, he does,” Malthias argued, appearing at Shiro’s side as if he’d been there all along. “If all of Hell recalls, Lucifer, the first Demon King, was only defeated when a _pair of brothers_ fought him, the younger one taking the elder’s place in battle as soon as he was fallen. It is in our history. There is no rule in the Rite that says the opposite is not allowed.”

Shiro glanced at Malthias, who stood just behind him, like he always had. As if he’d never left at all.

All around them, the demons muttered their displeasure, but there was no mistake in Malthias’ argument, and they all knew it.

But Shiro didn’t want Keith to take his place. What would it solve, if he just delayed the inevitable?

“He’s not going to lose,” he heard from his side. He turned, startled, to Allura, who had put her hand on his shoulder. “Look at him, Shiro. That is not the stature of a boy who needs us to look after him any longer. In fact, he's been looking after _us_ for longer than we've ever realized.”

Shiro looked up, at his brother facing the former prince, alone, in front of an entire horde of enemies. The same Keith that had constantly gotten into fights, who had never been able to control his emotions, who always acted before thinking. The same small body barely able to contain the raw power inside.

But he was no little boy anymore. Shiro could see that much. He stood, not with anger, but with sheer purpose, determination. And he was more powerful than ever.

“You’re right,” Shiro sighed. “He’s not going to lose.”

 

~Lance~

When finally Lotor said the words, “I accept your challenge,” the battle began.

Flashes of light filled the huge black courtyard, deep violet and lavender clashing against each other too quickly for Lance’s human eyes even to follow. Blasts of magical fire were quelled by a suffocating lavender fog, only to be pushed away by gusts of wind so strong they threatened to blow Lance off of his feet and succeeded in blowing some of the watching demons off of the palace walls. And it was not only the magic, either. He could hear the swords clashing against each other, even as the air began to super-heat from the intensity of the battle.

Lance glanced up and saw the clouds overhead beginning to swirl, flashing with lightning. Whether the storm was actually being summoned by one of the combatants, or if it was simply forming as a result of the intense, spiraling heat, Lance couldn’t tell, but either way, it was a distinct sign of the sheer power of what was happening.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked behind him to see Allura.

“You can’t stay here; it’s too dangerous!” she shouted over the sounds of the battle.

“You want me to run?!” He cried out, incredulous.

“If you stay, you’re only a liability to him,” she answered, looking up at the sky again. Lance followed her gaze, just in time to see Keith snap his wings open, soaring into the clouds that began to swirl around him, sucking up the violet fog below. But it was starting to pull at everything else, too-- even Lance.

He hesitated. She was right, and he knew it. If he stayed, Keith would be limited in how much he could do for fear of hurting him. But he felt like he _needed_ to be there.

Fire flashed in the sky as the tornado came down, swirling with fog and flame, only flashes of lightning illuminating the two inside, like shadow puppets behind a screen, a pair of black angels caught in a deadly dance.

Even the demons were starting to flee, panic on their faces. Lance was pretty sure they hadn’t expected the prince to be quite this powerful.

Allura’s hair came loose from its bun, whipping around her as she maintained a firm grip on Lance’s arm, which was a good thing, because the tornado was pulling hard enough to lift his legs off of the ground. “I’ll open a portal for you to the human world!” she shouted, lifting her other hand into the air, where a swirling white hole opened immediately.

But as soon as she did, a throng of demons surged toward her, eyes wild.

“We must escape!” one of them shrieked. “If the Princeling wins, he will come after us!”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Not so confident now that you’re not so sure your champion’s gonna win, huh?”

Allura turned, leaving the portal open behind her as she drew her whip, again beginning to glow fiercely, bright enough that the surge of demons were blinded, stumbling upon each other, but pressing forward nonetheless.

“Hurry and go!” she shouted to Lance. “I will hold them off!”

The tornado imploded behind them, as if it had been eaten up by the sudden wave of cold that now spread through the now half-destroyed courtyard. Keith was knocked out of the sky, falling to the ground, his eyes closed.

“NO!” Lance shrieked, watching as Lotor appeared above the prince’s falling body, his sword pointed down at his heart.

 _Wake up, Keith!_ He willed across the space between them, putting as much force as he could into the words. All of the magic he could manage.

Keith’s eyes snapped open, and he brought up the obsidian blade just in time to parry Lotor’s blow, spreading his wings at the perfect moment to avoid crashing to the ground, the very tip of his bare toes scraping the dirt before he soared back into the sky.

 _My energy comes from both Hell_ and _you right now,_ Keith had said. And it was true, Lance could tell. Only now did he feel the string wrapped around his heart, tying him to Keith, and feel the way it was sapping him of his strength.

Lance pulled his new bow over his neck and notched an arrow, taking aim at the oncoming surge of demons. “I can’t leave yet, Allura,” he answered, taking a deep breath, flexing his fingers, and releasing, sending the arrow deep into the neck of a surprised-looking minotaur, who spontaneously burst into a cloud of dust and red fire. “Not as long as Keith needs me.”

Allura frowned for a moment, then nodded. “I understand. But that means that you can’t let yourself get killed, either.”

“Don’t plan on it!”

Matt-- well, Malthias, now, he supposed, joined in, preventing the surging demons from escaping through the portal before Allura was able to close it again. Keith’s brother, too, cast a barrier around the palace, preventing any of them from going inside, either.

Lance shot off arrow after arrow, amazed at the steadiness of his aim despite the circumstances, and the destructive capabilities his arrows suddenly seemed to have taken on. It was as if they were filled with fire-- Keith’s demonic specialty.

Every demon had one, Lance had come to realize. Most of the greater demons were perfectly capable of using multiple types of magic, but all of them seemed to have gravitated toward a particular favorite. For Malthias, it was moonlight-- ample in the ever-night of the demon world. For Shiro, the Demon King, it appeared to be gravity. And for Keith, it was pure, unhindered fire.

Lotor’s didn’t initially seem as if it would be so potent-- it was that lavender fog that he had turned into before, back in the human world. But in the few glimpses Lance had been able to catch of the battle, it made him a tricky target-- most times Keith would be about to strike him, he would dissipate into fog, and then reform behind him, ready for a strike.

But Lance couldn’t focus on the fight for long, not when he also had to help Allura, Shiro, and Matt prevent the demons from either escaping, or trying to help Lotor win the fight.

“We are not leaving loose ends this time!” Allura shouted, incinerating a shadow demon with her golden whip. “This _ends_ today!”

And end it did, at that exact moment. A fiercely bright light shot straight down, embedding a crater into the ground, a shockwave powerful enough that Lance was knocked off of his feet.

When the dust cleared, the entire battlefield had gone still, trying to determine the outcome, staring down into the deep hole in what had once been the palace courtyard.

At the very bottom of the pit, Keith stood, one foot on Lotor’s chest and the very point of his sword at Lotor’s throat. In his other hand, he held Lotor’s sword, half of its blade broken off in the battle.

Keith was cut in several places, but even as Lance watched, they were healing, the skin knitting itself back together until it was smooth.

 _But how is he keeping Lotor from turning back into smoke?_ Lance thought, but then he saw it-- the frost clinging to Lotor’s legs, the way the pit was filling with water, which only further froze. It was so cold down there, Lance could feel it pulling all of the warmth out of the air.

 _Naturally occurring on Earth, gas is the highest state of matter, meaning that it has the most energy,_ Pidge had told him, back when she and Hunk had been helping him with his physics homework. _When it cools down, it doesn’t have enough energy to stay as a gas, so it becomes a liquid. Cool it down even more, and it becomes a solid._

Keith had frozen Lotor solid-- too solid for him to turn to gas.

 

~Keith~

Lotor glared up at him, coughing up the water that his lungs were undoubtedly filling themselves with every time he tried to turn himself into gas. “Your specialty is fire,” Lotor sputtered, liquid spilling out of his mouth with every word. “How did you figure it out?”

Keith maintained his calm, keeping the air and ground around him cold enough to freeze nitrogen, but maintaining his own internal body temperature.

“There’s someone I care about who reminded me of the sea, since the first moment I met him,” Keith answered, unmoving. “He gave me an idea.”

Lotor grimaced, still coughing up water, which immediately froze to his neck, only further pinning him in place.

“You’re a lovestruck fool.”

“I know.”

“Aren’t you going to kill me?”

“...No.”

Above him, Keith heard the collective gasp of dozens of the watching demons.

Lotor looked as if he was trying to laugh, but his lungs were too frozen to allow it. “The Rite is a battle to the death, and yet you are taking pity on me? Again? And here I thought you weren’t as soft as your brother is.”

“I’m not.” Keith answered, tossing Lotor’s broken sword out of the crater to Shiro, who caught it, as if by reflex. “And I’m not taking pity on you. I just know that killing you won’t achieve anything.”

“If you do not kill me, the Rite is unfinished.”

“There’s nothing in the rules that says it _has_ to be a battle to the death.”

“But that is how it has always been done!” a bat-winged incubus shouted down in protest.

“I don’t care,” Keith answered, pressing the point of his sword tighter to Lotor’s throat, drawing a tiny drop of violet-red blood. “Concede defeat, and this fight is over.”

Lotor hesitated, and Keith could see him considering his options, weighing the value of his life over the value of his pride.

Then, finally, “I concede defeat. The victor of the Rite is Keith, the Demon Prince,” he coughed on the words, still too frozen to move, but it was enough. Keith sheathed his sword, then grabbed the former prince by the collar and rose out of the crater, onto the burning, smoking dirt of the courtyard battleground.

He saw Lance shivering, and allowed his magic to relax, the air steadily warming up, even allowing the extreme chill focused on Lotor to dissipate. Immediately, the half-demon began to suck in deep breaths of air, his hand to his throat.

“Why?” Lotor asked, watching him out of the side of his eye. “Why spare me?”

“The same reason I spared you before. You’re right.”

Shiro looked taken aback, startled at his own brother’s announcement. “Keith?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t forgive you for kidnapping me, or for attempting to kill my brother. But I know why you’ve done all of these things. My marriage to Allura would never have brought peace to our peoples. All it would be is a show of force. It wouldn’t stop the angels from treating us like vermin.”

He paused, his eyes scanning over the watching crowd of demons, and Allura, standing at his brother’s side. Where she’d always been.

“Demons used to be angels, after all. They deserve to be given the choice… to return home.”

He turned back to Lotor, firm in his resolve. “What you did was wrong. But what you stand for is right. I can’t kill you so long as that’s the truth.”

Lotor bowed his head, a slight smile on his face. Keith knew it was not the end of trouble Lotor would be giving him. But he was confident he’d made the right choice.

“So the Rite is over. My brother remains King. Unless one of you would like to be the next to try?” he suggested to the gathered crowd, staring them down fiercely.

Most huddled backwards, some of them looking like they were ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.

And yet--

“The Rite remains unfinished!” the hyena-headed demon from before snarled. “Twice you and your allies have walked all over our most sacred law-- picking at its boundaries in order to suit your whimsy. If you do not even respect the Rite… then why should we demons even bother respecting the rule of the Demon King?!”

This time, most of the demons didn’t appear willing to agree. Most still shied away from Keith, thanks to the clear demonstration of his power that remained scattered around him as a result of his battle with Lotor.

But there were enough of them. Those greater demons that had caused and spread all of the discord across Hell in the first place… were not ready to give up yet.

“If you and your angels do not respect the Rite of the Demon King…” the hyena-headed demon sneered, its eyes flashing, “then why should we?”

“It’s that angel’s fault!” another screeched, turning on Allura, who still held her whip out in front of herself. “She’s trying to dictate our leadership!”

Allura tightened her grip on her whip. “I only wanted peace.”

“You want peace on _your_ terms!”

Another angel alighted next to her, standing next to her protectively-- her attendant, Coran, Keith recognized.

“How dare you accuse the Princess of such things!”

“We will not tolerate angels taking our freedom!” Another demon screeched, rising out of the dirt of the courtyard. “We do not follow heaven’s will! WE! ARE! DEMONS!”

And they surged forward-- this time, towards the angel princess.

 

~Lance~

A lot of things happened at once. Lance would like you to keep this in mind when you read the following list: these didn’t happen in sequential order, but in fact, _all at the same time_. They’re just presented in list format so that it is easiest to follow.

  1. It began to rain, the remnants of the storm from before.
  2. Dozens of white portals opened up in the sky, through each of which came an angel, immediately flying to their princess’ defence.
  3. Shiro jumped in front of Allura, lashing out with gravity magic that essentially opened up a black hole, sucking in and crushing any demon that got too close.
  4. Keith began armed combat with the hyena-headed demon, but he wasn’t at full strength, Lance could tell. He was worn down from his fight with Lotor.
  5. A chunk of demons took off, trying to escape before they could be identified as siding with the insurrectionists, but were stopped by Malthias standing in their path, already lashing out with strands of moonlight.



 

Lance reached into his quiver to protect himself, only to find that his arsenal of fire-magic-enhanced arrows had been completely depleted by the battle before, and the only one left was the familiar blue fletching of his lucky arrow.

 _I saved this for a reason_ , he thought. _I know it. But what could it possibly be?!_

Before he could think of an answer, Allura was grabbing him by the shoulder and saying, “Lance, get out of here, _now!_ This is not a request!”

She opened up another portal as combat-- demon against angel, demon against demon-- roared to life around them. “It will take you directly to your friends; now go!”

This time, Lance complied, nodding to her his thanks and leaping through the portal.

 

~Pidge~

“Look, Matt, there’s a _lot_ to explain,” she attempted. “And you might not even believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, well, Lance accidentally summoned a demon. And then another demon came through and pretended to be _you_ so that he could capture _Lance’s_ demon. And Lance’s demon has a fiance who’s an angel, and an arch-nemesis who’s half-demon, half-angel, and he managed to capture Lance’s demon and bring him to Hell, but since Lance kinda fell in love with his demon, he went to Hell to save him, and kind of in the process, the three of us learned how to do magic--”

“Come on, Pidge, you can tell me the truth! I’m your big brother!” Matt pouted, stepping into the room and closing the door.

Just then, a white hole opened up in the bedroom wall, and Lance leaped through.

Matt jumped backwards so quickly he tipped over his luggage and fell on top of it, staring at the gap in space, and the boy most of the way through it.

“Lance!” Pidge shouted, relief and concern in her voice all at once.

“You guys are alright!”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she replied, indicating everyone’s injuries. “What’s going on?!”

Lance gritted his teeth and turned back, to where his right leg was still stuck in the portal. “There’s a big fight going on and I--”

He was yanked backwards, as if something had him by the foot.

“Hang on, they don’t want me to escape-- they know I’m Keith’s weakness.”

And then he was yanked backwards fully, disappearing out of their sight.

“Lance?! Lance!” Hunk shouted, getting to his feet despite his dislocated shoulder.

Matt stared at the portal in wide-eyed confusion. “Wait, are you _serious_?! That’s a portal to _Hell?_ ”

Lance reappeared, this time just his head, as he seemed to be struggling against a monster with hands scaled like bird feet, barely held back from clawing at his face by the bow he held between them. “If this keeps going on, this battle’s never going to end. Something has to change-- something _big_.”

He disappeared again, and through the haze of the portal, Pidge thought she could see Lance’s silhouette smack the demon holding him with his bow, before trying to come through again.

“I have an idea!” He shouted, even though it looked as if something else had him by the arm. “Pidge, do you have another copy of that spell you used in the shopping mall?!”

“No, but I memorized it-- I can make you another one!”

“Great, thanks!” He was jerked backwards again, managing to shout, “but hurry!” before he disappeared back through the portal.

Pidge turned to Matt. “Throw me the pen on the floor next to you!” She demanded, swiping up a piece of graded homework on the floor and flipping it over to reveal the blank side.

When Matt remained frozen in shock, she yelled, “Matt, please! We don’t have time to waste!”

He jolted out of his paralysis and tossed her the pen, although still transfixed on the shadows he could see battling through the portal.

Pidge scribbled faster than a college student who had waited to write their five-page paper until an hour before the 11:59 pm deadline. Not that she had any experience with that.

The final touch was to rub some of the blood off of her arm and smear it across the spell circle she’d drawn-- completed just in time for Lance’s hand to come through the portal-- just his hand, as the rest of him appeared to be busy.

She dropped the paper in his hand, and she saw him grab it tightly in his fist, then give the demon he was struggling with a good whack with the bow, knocking it far enough away that what looked like an angel was able to snatch it up.

Finally, he stepped all the way through, his clothes torn, bleeding in dozens of places, and bruised in even more. “Just letting you guys know… if I’m wrong about this… it could be the single worst thing I’ve ever done. Probably literally the end of the world.”

Pidge glanced at her brother, her _real_ brother, and at the cats in the corner, Red with his singed tail and Blue with her injured leg. And at Hunk, his arm dangling uselessly at his side. And through the portal, where she could swear she saw Matt #2, protecting Lance from the demons trying to get to the portal.

She swallowed, looking up at him and pushing her glasses up on her nose, letting them glint in the room’s lights. “ _Do it.”_

 

~Lance~

He was probably the only being in Hell, Heaven, and Earth, that had ever _climbed_ Lucifer’s Tower. From the outside. The only being who had clung to it for dear life, inspecting the gold surface for every carving, every crack, in order to rise just a bit higher.

It was carved in the shape of a pair of folded wings, as if Lucifer remained over all of them, threatening to come free, to destroy everything that demons had created in his absence. As if any peace was only a temporary reprieve from eventual chaos.

But Lance was probably the only one who had really seen _inside_ , as he’d climbed. Who had looked closely enough at the gold to see all of its flaws, its weaknesses, even full cracks that allowed him to stare through into the blackness and search for the boy he loved.

He was probably the only one who knew that it even _had_ a structural weakness-- the point where the wings joined each other, a point where the gold was too thin to support the weight above it.

While Matt and Allura struggled against the insurrectionist demons, he had a tiny bubble of safety. A brief moment where he could concentrate. Block out the sounds of battle. Focus.

He jabbed Pidge’s spell paper onto the point of his lucky arrow, and notched it into the string of his red-and-black bow, flowing into his shooting position, focusing. Breathing. Flex the fingers in his left hand. His right. Exhale. Release.

_I wish..._

The arrow zinged through the air, whistling as it caught the wind, catching fire as it went, growing in power the further it flew.

When it reached the place where the pair of folded golden wings overlapped...it exploded.

And with that, Lucifer’s Tower began to crumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That chapter got SUUUUPER long! But... a lot had to happen. Especially considering the wait after last chapter! Sorry about that! We're almost at the end, though!  
> So here are some headcannons for you:  
> Lance is actually a social sciences/humanities major. He decided to take physics as a gen ed class because Hunk told him it would improve his archery-- it did.  
> Shiro is really quite powerful, or he never would have been made king in the first place-- he just isn’t quite as willing to use it as Keith is. Part of trying to rule by assent rather than by force.


	16. Other Options

~Lance~

As soon as the arrow hit, the battle screeched to a halt. Demons and angels alike froze, staring horrified at the sight of the golden tower falling apart, huge blocks of gold crashing toward the ground, and its enchantments falling apart with them.

An angel grabbed him by the shoulders, eyes wild. “DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?!” it screeched, a piercing howl loud enough to make Lance’s ears bleed. He winced, but was pulled out of the angel’s grip by the Demon King-- Keith’s brother, Shiro-- who stepped in front of him protectively.

The shift was instantaneous. The demons flocked to Shiro’s side, facing the crumbling tower with grim determination on their faces.

And the angels, too, turned their weapons away from the demons and towards the wreckage, their eyes flashing with… was that fear?

“We cannot let Lucifer free!” Shiro declared, unsheathing the huge bastard sword strapped to his back. “Whatever you think of me as king, I will _not_ let him destroy what we have built!”

“Nor will we,” Allura confirmed, her golden whip flashing.

The dust from the debris was so intense, Lance could barely see through the air, and was fairly sure he was breathing in gold dust. If he could clean out his lungs back home, he’d probably be rich.

 _Please be right, please be right, please be right,_ he prayed, his grip so tight on his bow that he’d lost circulation in the tips of his fingers.

The angels and demons all surged toward the tower, together, weapons risen, their joint battle scream echoing in Lance’s bones. The beating wings, running feet, hooves, paws thundered together in a mass, threatening to take Lance with them.

But then Keith landed by his side, and the demon-angel army parted around them like a stream around a boulder-- they’d seen well enough that the Demon Prince deserved respect.

It took mere moments for the army to reach the rubble of the tower, the gold dust so thick that they disappeared inside of it for a moment.

He could feel the web of enchantments that had been attached to the tower snap and fall away as its remains settled into the ground, the air finally clearing, revealing…

Nothing.

Shiro stopped short, the entire rest of the army following suit. They stared, confused, at the rubble, then at each other, and then, slowly, all turned back to look at Lance, still standing there with the bow in his hand.

Now that _all_ of their eyes were suddenly on him, Lance was more scared than he’d been the entire time he’d been in Hell.

“I, um, I’m not an angel or a demon, so I don’t know what happened in your history. Maybe Lucifer really was imprisoned in that tower once. But… I saw it while I was climbing. Aside from Keith, in the very top room of the place… the whole thing was empty.”

Shiro and Allura exchanged glances, then quickly returned to him, landing almost simultaneously in front of him and Keith.

“But why would you _destroy_ it?” Allura asked, baffled.

Lance shrunk, a bit sheepishly, even ducking a bit behind one of Keith’s wings. “Well, I… I realized that… everyone’s afraid of that tower. The demons are afraid of it because… they all thought that Lucifer’s in there. And the angels hate it because that’s where they’re imprisoned whenever you guys go at each other’s throats. I thought… if it was empty, then you guys don’t need to fight each other. You’ve hated each other over a fear of something that probably hasn’t even existed for… thousands of years.”

Understanding slowly started to dawn across Shiro and Allura’s faces, and Lance felt his courage begin to grow again. “And maybe I don’t have the right to mess with your politics, since I’m just a selfish human. But _because_ I’m a selfish human…”

He stood up straight, linking hands with Keith, and staring Demon King Shiro dead in the eye as he announced, “I wish you’d just let Keith stay by my side as long as that makes him happy.”

 

~Keith~

It took a moment for him to actually grasp the full meaning of what he’d heard. He just kind of stared at Lance blankly, until it hit, like an ocean wave crashing down on him.

The string around his heart that had tied him to Lance all of this time seemed to slacken, as if about to fall away… and then returned, tight as ever, but not uncomfortable. He pressed a hand to his heart, his other tightening its grip on Lance’s.

“Are you sure… you want to waste your wish on me?” he gasped, the magic already settling over him.

“If it’s for you, it’s not a waste,” Lance answered immediately, so smooth that Keith couldn’t hide the smile spreading across his face.

They faced Shiro and Allura, together, and Keith was amazed by how bravely Lance was staring them down, his back straight, his eyes locking with theirs. He never failed to surprise Keith, from the moment he’d met him-- fear and courage all in one boy.

When Keith looked around at all of Hell, though, he felt his heart sink. All of Hell was watching, and a great deal of Heaven, too, based on the indignant surprise on the angels’ faces. But none said a word, waiting patiently for their leaders to answer.

The silence stretched on and on, and Keith’s mind began to spin, wondering if he was going to have to continue to fight his own people in order to grant Lance’s wish. If he might even have to fight his own brother.

And then… Shiro began to laugh.

It echoed through the silence, across the ruined courtyard of the Obsidian Palace and over the ruins of Lucifer’s Tower. A deep, throaty laugh, as if it hadn’t been used in a long, long time.

All of the demons looked baffled, wondering if their King had finally snapped. Even Allura was staring at Shiro with marked concern, unsure of what to say.

Finally, Shiro gathered himself, patting Lance on the shoulder and turning to face the gathered forces of Heaven and Hell. “Well, there you have it! It’s over!”

Malthias, approaching from the front of the force, exchanged glances with the angel, Coran. “Um… what do you mean?”

“There’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. Keith has a contract with this human-- if we tried to force him from his side now, Keith would be forced to fight all of us-- and I don’t think any of you want to try that after his fight with Lotor.”

Most of the demons shook their heads vigorously.

Shiro turned back to Keith and Lance, his expression softening. “I was so determined to save Hell, I was willing to sacrifice Keith’s happiness. I was willing to sacrifice my own life if I needed to. I have all of the power of Hell, of the Demon King, at my disposal, and yet you managed to throw a wrench into everything with a _single_ wish. Of course I had to laugh. You’ve made a fool out of all of us.”

He looked down at Keith, his smile returning. “I guess you won’t be marrying Allura, huh?”

Keith shrugged. “I guess not.”

The angels came forward, looking panicked. “But… Your Majesty, we came to Hell to retrieve the princess for the express purpose of preparing for the wedding… with all that has happened, is it not still necessary to mark our new union with a marriage? If the Demon Prince does not marry Princess Allura, then… who will?”

Shiro turned to them with a smile. “I will.”

A second wave of shock spread through the gathered crowd, including Allura.

“You will?” she asked, blinking.

“I will.”

“But… after all of this time, and-- I never told you… and we are not betrothed!” she sputtered, her face flushing bright red.

Keith and Lance exchanged knowing glances, settling into each other as they watched the final piece of the puzzle fall into place.

“Oh, if all it takes is the betrothal, then…” Shiro answered, dropping down onto his knees.

“Allura, knowing that you were pledged to my brother, I refused to acknowledge what was in my own heart. For all of the many years of our lives, you have been my greatest friend, my comfort, the brightest light in the darkness I found myself surrounded with. You have worried with me, fought with me, and gave me courage even when you weren’t with me. I put my duty before myself for far too long, and I hope you can forgive me for this, but I am asking for this one selfish desire-- since I am, after all, a selfish demon.”

He looked up, giving Lance and Keith a wink. “If you’d settle for me instead of Keith, I’d be the happiest demon in all of the three worlds. So… would you marry me?” he asked, taking her gently by the hand, and giving it the softest, most hesitant kiss.

Allura’s face was turning bright red, and she hid her face with her free hand. But since she was _literally_ glowing, bright enough that it was starting to hurt Keith’s eyes, it was pretty obvious what she was feeling, no matter how she tried to hide it.

“Oh, do get off the ground, Shiro. If we are to be married, then we’ll do it as equals.”

And with that, the crowd exploded into applause.

As Shiro and Allura faced their well-wishers, including Malthias and Coran, who immediately declared that they’d known all along, Keith allowed himself to finally relax, to close his eyes and lean into the boy he loved, breathing him in.

He gagged, frowning at Lance. “You smell like an entire field of Demonic wildflowers.”

Lance glared down at him. “Way to ruin the moment.”

“Sorry.” But he couldn’t help but smile.

 

~Lance~

The wedding wasn’t going to be for a few months, but that didn’t stop the demons from celebrating through the streets of the city for hours on end, their hoots and hollers reminding him of when he’d first entered Hell, and the terrifying glee with which they’d celebrated the possibility of their King’s death.

But it was different now. They seemed genuinely happy for the developments, toasting the King’s engagement, although Lance still _really_ hoped it was tomato juice that they were drinking.

The demons still terrified him, even though Keith was quick to introduce him to the ones he thought were “nice,” including Sleveth, the snake woman who was Malthias’ mom.

The insurrectionists had been quickly rounded up, and were being held in a makeshift prison until a joint council of angels and demons could decide on their punishment. Malthias had been the primary demon in charge of this, calm and confident as he settled the last one into its cell.

It was Lotor, his face as impassive as ever, but his posture unfailingly proud. As Malthias guided him toward his cell, he caught a glance at Keith and Lance, and paused.

“I will not resist my imprisonment, Malthias, but I wish to speak to the prince.”

Malthias hesitated, catching Keith’s gaze.

“It’s alright, Matt.”

He guided Lotor to approach, still watching him carefully.

Keith straightened, again appearing larger than he was, although Lance knew he was exhausted, could feel it.

“I underestimated you,” Lotor announced. “Both of you,” he added, with a nod to Lance.

“It was a good fight,” Keith answered. “I don’t hold it against you.”

“You don’t?” Lotor asked, raising an eyebrow.

Keith shrugged. “I mean, you’re still going to go to trial, like all of the other insurrectionists who tried to overthrow my brother, but… it all turned out okay. We’re finally with the people we’ve belonged with all along. I can’t hate you for that.”

Lotor swallowed, gazing at the prison cell that awaited him. “Will demons be allowed to enter Heaven again?”

Keith shifted. “Allura said that it probably won’t happen right away, but she’s going to work on creating a permit system, where demons can earn the right to enter Heaven by having clean records, or working with angels to make positive change. It’s not a lot, but… it’s something.”

Lotor nodded. “Then you have my thanks.”

Lance looked up at him, hesitated, and then said, “you know… that can include you. If you work at it, they might forgive you.”

“That is kind of you, human.”

“I know,” Lance answered with a wry smile. “Now hurry up and go to prison.”

Malthias rolled his eyes, but couldn’t conceal his grin as he gave Lotor’s arm a tug and guided him into his cell.

~

The celebrations continued long into the night… which is a nice saying when on Earth, where night actually _ends_. To be honest, Lance wasn’t sure if it had only _been_ one night, or if he’d been there an entire week. He hadn’t really had a chance to clean up after the fight, and his arms and legs all felt like lead.

But finally, it was time to go.

They managed to pull Shiro and Allura away from the celebrations, insisting to be allowed to return to Earth. To return home.

Allura smiled, giving Lance a curt bow. “I have much to thank you for, Lance. You… were right. It really could end in a way where everyone gets to be happy. I don’t think I would have realized it without you.”

Shiro slid his hand into hers, if still a bit shy about it. They were gonna be a kickass royal couple, Lance could tell. “I think that we both don’t like to admit it, but angels and demons have always _needed_ humanity. So that we don’t always get so caught up in magic, we forget that problems can sometimes have simpler solutions. So to thank you, I have a gift for you.”

Lance blinked. “A gift?”

Shiro grinned, and turned toward the wreckage of Lucifer’s Tower. He raised his hand, and one of the huge, scattered chunks of gold rose into the sky, casting a shadow down below. With a flick of his wrist, it sank in on itself, screeching as it shrank, sucked into the miniature black hole in the sky.

Watching this, Lance felt his legs go weak again.

Shiro let his arm fall, and with it, the piece of gold, which was now no larger than a pendant. He caught it, then held it out to Lance. “A bit of a trophy for the best archer Hell has ever seen. Skilled enough to destroy the terror of Lucifer with a single arrow.”

It was a tiny replica of Lucifer’s Tower, a solid gold pair of folded wings, perfect down to every detail in the feathers.

Lance gingerly took it from him, about to say “thanks,” when the actual weight of the thing came into his hands.

He immediately dropped, his hands pinned to the ground by the figurine. “SO! HEAVY!”

“Oh, I forgot to mention… that’s still a _lot_ of gold. Just really… compact.”

Grinning, Keith leaned over and plucked the pendant off of Lance’s hands, quickly healing them and helping Lance back up. “Thanks, Shiro. It’s great.”

“Yeah, fantastic,” Lance answered sourly. “Can we go home now?”

Allura sighed. “Oh, alright. But promise us you will return. For the wedding, you know.”

She began to glow again at the word “wedding,” but Lance decided not to mention it.

“Oh, sure. I’ve kinda started to enjoy Hell. It’s grown on me.”

“Liar.”

“Yup.”

She shook her head, smiling, and waved her hand, opening a portal in the air.

“Then by all means, return home.”

“Isn’t Malthias coming?”

“No,” she answered. “He will visit, if Pidge allows him, but only then. After all, he was only taking the place of the person who truly belonged there. But since the real Matthew Holt has returned… he no longer belongs.”

“Oh…”

Lance took one last glance around Hell, at the rejoicing demons, the angels who were pretending they didn’t like liquor and then completely drinking the largest demons under the table, the buildings of precious metals, and flowers of glittering jewels, and then turned back to the portal. “Then I guess I’m going.”

“ _We’re_ going,” Keith clarified, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll see you soon, Shiro. Allura. I hope you’ll always be happy. I always wished you would be.”

And with that, they stepped through the portal, the demon world disappearing behind them.

~

The portal winked closed behind them, leaving the two of them alone in the first deep silence Lance had entered in what felt like years, deep enough to allow his mind to finally rest for a moment, to take in his surroundings. The shadows of the campus buildings in the dim light of sunrise on the horizon, the still-blooming clouds of white plum blossoms lining the path toward the apartment buildings, and the boy standing next to him, clothes torn, dirty, and exhausted, and yet just as beautiful as he had been the first time Lance had laid eyes on him.

It was peaceful. It was perfect.

They let the silence stretch on for a long time, just watching the pinks and reds slowly spread out across the dawn sky, a sight neither had seen for many days.

Finally, a thought crossed Lance’s mind-- at first a small thought, but quickly growing into a matter of great concern, enough to shatter the peace he had only just been feeling.

“So-- about the wish… you still need a payment, right? I’m sorry I didn’t give you any warning, or… kind of made it into a wish that traps you with me. Um, you can leave, if… you ever don’t want to stay. I mean, it’s only as long as it makes you happy. But… yeah, about the price… just please don’t take anything I need for archery. Or school.”

Keith snorted a laugh, reaching out and twining his fingers through Lance’s. “Don’t worry about it. I want to be here.”

“But you need a price, right? I made my wish! And… and it was a pretty big one, too. I mean...it was big enough to stop a war between Heaven and Hell. Is that a soul-stealing kind of wish-price?”

Keith thought about it for a moment, then gave Lance’s arm a little tug, pulling him towards him so that they were looking each other in the eyes. “Hmmm… Not your soul,” he answered, then reached up and laid a hand on Lance’s chest. “I will have to take your heart, though. Without that, I don’t know if I can grant your wish.”

Lance’s eyes widened. “What?! You can’t take that! I _need_ that!”

Keith raised an eyebrow at him, and Lance paused and reconsidered the offer. “Oh… Ohhhh, you mean _that_ way… well then of course you can have it. You already have it.”

“I thought so,” Keith answered, smiling wryly to himself and pulling his boyfriend down to him, enveloping him in his arms and his wings, as the warm glow of sunrise illuminated the both of them, blurring whatever was left of the lines between Heaven, Hell, and Humanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lance: “This bitch empty! YEET!”  
> ...sorry; couldn’t help myself.
> 
> Also, about Shiro's gift-- gravity magic just makes the thing extremely DENSE-- so the tiny figurine weighs the exact same amount as the original huge block of solid gold did. There's enough gold there for Lance to be a millionaire. :P
> 
> Anyway, the ending (Very much a Stardust ending) is finally here! Again, thanks everyone for sticking with me through my long absence, and even helping me write, sometimes. As usual, your comments always kept me going, and helped make this story a pleasure to write. If you ever want to chat, fangirl about Klance, or the newest season of VLD, you can always come chat with me at my Tumblr, elfenphoenix-- same as here. :)


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